Mark Twain

I learned that Mark Twain was a pen name Samuel Clemens had chosen for himself!

Google's aeronautical endevours 2: O3b satellites!

This summer, I was surprised to learn from manotv, a Persian TV based in England, that Google has launched its first series of four O3b satellites from French Guiana on June 25, 2013! [1]  I am puzzled why this has not got more publicity in the U.S. media or maybe it did and I missed it.   O3b Satellite Constellations is another project of Google aiming to connect people all over the world, similar to Google Loon Project, especially those in remote areas who currently do not have broadband internet access.  The first of these satellites was built in France and the remaining ones was assembled,integrated, and tested in Italy.  O3b satellites will fly in a circular orbit, about 8000 kilometers above the Earth, in medium Earth Orbit.  A quick search reveals that Google is an investor of O3b Networks, along with other companies, to enabling next generation high speed satellite networks.

This is the beginning of a new era making the space and computing technologies come full circle. It was the space industry that enabled high performance computing via commodity computing and invented some computers for aerospace missions, and now it is the computing industry benefiting from the space industry.

References:

[1] http://gigaom.com/2013/06/25/google-backed-o3b-successfully-launches-its-first-four-satellites-into-the-heavens/
[2] http://gigaom.com/2013/06/24/googles-other-plan-to-connect-the-unconnected-satellites/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSSC-1
[4] http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/pdf/Dorband.pdf
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_%28satellite%29
[6] http://www.o3bnetworks.com/

LADEE

LADEE stands for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.  It is the most recent of NASA's missions to  moon, which was launched on Friday, September 6 from NASA Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility in VA..  It is a robotic mission for orbiting moon and studying its dust environment and exosphere.

"An “exosphere” is an atmosphere that is so thin and tenuous that molecules don’t collide with each other. Studying the Moon’s exosphere will help scientists understand other planetary bodies with exospheres too, like Mercury and some of Jupiter’s bigger moons." [2]

It takes one month for LADEE to get to moon's orbit.  Then, the 100-day Science Phase of the mission, during which LADEE orbits the moon at an altitude of 20-60 kilometers from the moon, starts. Finally, LADEE's lowers its altitude and impacts the moon.  This final stage takes 30 days, resulting in a total mission lifetime of 160 days.

In addition to scientific results of LADEE, this mission was important for several other reasons, mainly new technologies and capabilities that were demonstrated and tested during this mission.  The mission used a Minotaur V rocket of the Orbital Sciences, that is expected to be used in future launches [5].  Furthermore, Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) mission is achieved via LADEE.  This demonstration is the first high-rate, two-way space communication capability, a major advancement in space communication.  Both of these capabilities opens doors to future faster cheaper space missions with more and faster science data rates.  Finally it was the first time that Wallops Flight Facility launched something that can reach moon, and one hopes that this facility's capabilities mature and advance even more in the future.

The mission is managed by NASA Ames Research Center, flown by Orbital Sciences at Wallops Flight Center, while some of its instruments as well as LLCD technology were managed and developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center [6].  The mission was visible on the east coast of the United States from VA, to MD, DC, and even NY.  Here is a nice image of LADEE on its way to the moon from New York City:

Image Credit: Ben Cooper

Go LADEE!

References:

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ladee/main/#.UjY5838pid0
[2] http://science1.nasa.gov/missions/ladee/
[3] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ladee/mission-overview/index.html#.UjY8a38pid1
[4] http://esc.gsfc.nasa.gov/267/271.html
[5] http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/MinotaurV/index.shtml
[6] http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112928749/major-role-played-nasa-goddard-lunar-mission-082113/

Hubble and Another Moon!

Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California has discovered 14th known moon of planet Neptune using Hubble Space Telescope's data of Neptune obtained in 2009!  This moon is 12 miles in diameter, the smallest and the faintest of the Neptune moons.  It is so faint that even escaped detection by Voyager 2 Spacecraft in 1989 that flew by Neptune to survey this planet.  Showalter detected this moon on July 1, when it was 65400 miles away from Neptune!  This moon is currently referred to as S/2004 N 1, and orbits the planet, based on Showalter calculations, once every 23 hours!

Yet another reminder that we are just beginning to know our own backyard, the solar system, and that Hubble remains one of the major innovations of the last century with high, if not the highest scientific impact, among other innovations.  To learn about Hubble discoveries to date, please visit here. 

"This composite Hubble Space Telescope picture shows the location of a newly discovered moon, designated S/2004 N 1, orbiting Neptune. The black and white image was taken in 2009 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in visible light. Hubble took the color inset of Neptune on August 2009. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Showalter/SETI Institute"

To learn more about newly discovered Moon of Neptune, please visit here.

Reference:

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-hubble-finds-new-neptune-moon/#.UelHpRaUdjC
[2] http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/

Google's aeronautical endeavors 1: Google Loon Project!

Google has changed our lives first with its search engines and then with so many services it offers to us from mail, blogs, docs, scholar, etc.  All these enable fast paced research, knowledge sharing, collaboration, and above all connection among people!  Now, Google is expanding its horizons even further by realizing that not all people in the world have access to broadband internet to be able to benefit from these services to begin with.  So, they want to solve that problem too.  I have recently learned about a couple of their efforts for providing free broadband internet to remote rural areas.  The first one is Google's balloon project, Loon, aiming at providing internet access to underprivileged and disconnected (to internet that is) areas of the world.  In this project Google launches balloons to a 20 km altitude.  These balloons are powered with solar energy and their navigation algorithms consider and benefit from wind direction!  They are much cheaper than launching satellites and can provide internet coverage for up to a 25 mile radius [2]!  The balloons travel around the world.  For example, the same balloon that was over South Africa will be over South America eventually  [3].

A Project Loon launch in New Zealand. Photograph: John Shenk/EPA", Source: the Gaurdian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/15/project-loon-google-balloon-internet

While the idea is smart and cost-effective, Google, like most big organizations and even countries, is beginning to learn that its hardest challenges are not technological [3-4].  The problem is beyond local, state, or governmental bureaucracy, it is international bureaucracy! [4]  Loon project needs to cross borders of many countries with different politics and rules.  For example, Texas and Tehran happen to be in the same altitude [3].  Will a Google balloon make its way to Iran's aerospace or China's?  I am curious to see how Google manages to connect the world on internet!    It seems like Google was well-aware and willing to take on these challenges and they chose this name, Loon, partly to recognize the strange and seemingly unrealistic goals they want to achieve! [5]  Regardless, any new country and region they give broadband internet access to, be it in Africa or Asia, connecting children and adults to educational and informative resources, is a great service to humanity.

On June 16, 2013 Google started a trial of this project with 30 balloons over New Zealand! After this pilot run, Google plans on sending 300 balloons to cover areas in Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and Chile, and later on Google dreams of having thousands of such balloons in stratosphere[5]

I talk about another Google effort for providing internet access to people all over the world in a second post.

To learn more about the Loon project please check out the references below.

References:

[1] http://www.google.com/loon/
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/technology/technology-trends/10162043/google-project-loon.html
[3] http://gigaom.com/2013/06/21/project-loon-googles-biggest-obstacle-isnt-technology-its-politics/
[4] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/23/googles-project-loon-problem-international-bureaucracy/
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Loon
[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/15/project-loon-google-balloon-internet

MAVEN, Mars, and You!

Image Credit: NASA, http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/440014main_MAVEN2-full.jpg

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) is NASA's next mission to Mars, scheduled to launch in late 2013.  This mission is tasked with understanding Mars' upper atmosphere.  NASA invites you to send your name with a Haiku (short poem) to be send around Mars orbit on Maven spacecraft:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars/send-your-name/

The deadline is today, July 1, 2013! Leave your Mark in the outer space and feel free to share your poems as comments to this post.  Please pay attention to the rules of the game and Haiku (made of 3 lines with specified syllabus numbers):

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars/contest-rules/

To learn all about Maven, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html#.UdGZaBblMRl

June 26, 2013

June 26, 2013 is recorded in the U.S. history forever, as the day that an individual named Edie Windsor won a case against the United States in the Supreme Court because she believed her constitutional rights were violated.  Her action and victory does not only affect the many gay or lesbian partners or their children, but sends a strong message to generations to come: when you believe you have a case, you have a case.  Go get your right, and know that the foundations of a healthy democracy and justice system is all you need.  If you are lucky enough to have such structures in place in your society, you better honor such a system by using it for the purposes it was designed for to its fullest extent and capability. If you do not have such a system in place, you need to help build one!

It has not been even a week since the Supreme Court has passed this ruling, five days and three working days to be exact.   Today, my colleagues and I received an email from our Human Resources office indicating those who are in same-sex marriages, can now add their spouses and children to their health insurance policy, that they can benefit from other benefits for child care, retirement, etc just as any other spouse or child of a family would.  I was proud of seeing the power of law and democracy in action and how quickly a new law gets implemented.  For me, seeing that email was historic for the reasons I mentioned and more; among them for the respect the people have for the law.  I am sure there are many religious people not happy with this ruling.  But once the case has gone through all the steps of a justice system, once the game is over, they accept the verdict.  If they do not, they revisit the case in the court of law not in streets with destructions, bullets, and chaos.  Today, I was proud of America and Americans.

QE2s

As most of you know the name of the asteroid 1998 QE2 reminds many of the cruise ship QE2.  This nice video tells you how the properties of the QE2 of the skies relates to those of the seas:




Reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Gp8576W8QHU#!

1998 QE2

During the past weeks we have heard about asteroid 1998 QE2 and how it has got closer than any other asteroid to Earth.  Whether or not it poses any dangers to us or not (well, it does not). In fact, the closest approach of this asteroid to Earth occurs tomorrow, May 31, 4:59 pm Eastern Time, "when the asteroid will get no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon". As eyes were on this asteroid to capture this approach, NASA scientists discovered that QE2 has its own moon!   Radar data of NASA's Goldstone Deep Space antenna in California were used for this finding.  Images were taken from "3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances." To learn more read here.

Yet, I wonder, where is my moon?  I mean Vesta's moon?

Reference:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130530.html

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission

Designing, building, launching, and operating a spacecraft is hard and detailed enough, requiring many hours of manpower at every stage.  Recently, there have been missions that launched two spacecrafts to work together to achieve mission goals.  Stereo for studying the Sun and GRAIL for studying the moon are examples of such missions.  It seems like we have built so much confidence and got bold enough to try a mission with 4 spacecrafts:  Magnetospheric Multiscale  (MMS) Mission.

Photo Credit: NASA, http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/observatory_integration/obs3/obs3_08.html

MMS will do something unique:  it studies how the Earth's and Sun's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, and as a result  transfer energy to Earth and other planets in a process called reconnection. MMS uses 4 identical spacecrafts spaced in Earth's orbit, to obtain 3-dimensional data of the magnetospheric boundary to study this process.  MMS  uses the Earth's magnetosphere as a natural laboratory that can be directly studied.

MMS is being built in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and is currently scheduled to launch in October 2014.  The mission is similar to ESA's Cluster mission with more spatial and temporal resolution, allowing to study the electron diffusion region.

References:
[1] Magnetospheric Multiscale  (MMS) Mission.
[2] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/mms_magnetic.html
[3] http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/about_mms.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetospheric_Multiscale_Mission
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_mission

How does it work?

Yesterday morning on the way to work, NPR was broadcasting an interview with Sheryl Sandberg and her new book Lean In was mentioned and discussed.  Then, when I arrived home, she was on the cover page of the weekly Time magazine that I receive in mail.  At night, I saw Piers Morgan had a piece on her and 60 Minutes a program on her.  How is it that everyone has a program or release about her on the same exact date?  Did they all want to be the first and that was the only way to avoid their content being out dated?  But how do they learn about the timeline and schedule of other competitive media.  Today, TED reshared an old video of her famous talk, "Why we have too few women leaders", on facebook too.  It is as if over night, the world decided to concentrate on her.  What happened? How does it work?

Was her book released yesterday?

Word of the day

Uxorious (adjective): someone who is foolishly and madly in love with his wife and is affectionatly submissive to her.

Hard to know if this word has a positive or negative connotation! ;-)

Earth's Third Radiation Belt!

It was over 50 years ago in 1958 that Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 confirmed the existence of two radiation belts around Earth under Dr. James Van Allen's direction [1].  Van Allen Probes, previously called Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), were launched on August 30, 2012.   The objective of this mission, as its name suggests,  is to

"study two extreme and dynamic regions of space known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts that surround Earth. Named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, these two concentric, donut-shaped rings are filled with high-energy particles that gyrate, bounce, and drift through the region, sometimes shooting down to Earth's atmosphere, sometimes escaping out into space. The radiation belts swell and shrink over time as part of a much larger space weather system driven by energy and material that erupt off the sun's surface and fill the entire solar system." [2]

While most satellites are designed to turn off during intense radiation bombardments,Van Allen Probes are built to operate, tolerate, and collect data during such harsh conditions.

It is thus so fortunate and fitting that NASA Scientists have discovered a third radiation belt around our very own home planet Earth using Van Allen Probe's data soon after its launch [3].  To learn more about this discovery, please visit here.

Credit: NASA/Van Allen Probes/Goddard Space Flight Center.

This discovery is a humbling reminder that there is a lot yet to be learned about our home, Earth, let alone other planets and corners of this vast universe.

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt 
2. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/mission/index.html
3. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/third-belt.html

Curmudgeon

Today I learned the word "Curmudgeon", meaning a difficult or bad-temperred person.  One of its synonyms is cantankerous, which was also a new word to me.

Largest known prime number

World's known largest prime number with 17-million digits is found! It is 2^57,885,161 -1, and thus it is a Mersenne prime number. A Mersenne prime number has the form 2^p -1, where p is a prime. Learn more about this finding here.

Behind the LASIK Eye

By now you should have learned that Baltimore Ravens have won the Super Bowl :-) I have learned a pleasantly surprising piece of information, rather late. Do you know who is the inventor of the LASIK eye surgery? Dr. Gholam Peyman! Learn more about him here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gholam_A._Peyman

And here:

 http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/54753/

Connecting to Universe

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert_Einstein

Lego

Fifty five years ago today, modern Lego bricks were patented!  Lego is from a Danish word meaning "play well".

References:

Diane Sawyer's program on ABC news today, and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

Keep Playing!

The game is on, and the job is to solve hard scientific problems.  So, in future instead of blaming every bad incident to kids playing computer games too much, people associate scientific breakthroughs, better life quality, and technologies to it.  Instead of kids getting more violent, they may get more innovative and creative, and learn a few things! How about that? Here are some existing games, aiming to solve hard scientific problems, according to the Scientist:

http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/33843/title/Game-On/


If all goes well, there will be another one added to this list, by truly yours, maybe next year?

Stay tuned, and keep playing the game of science, discovery, and exploration!

Neanderthals

Neanderthals are now extinct species that were closely related to modern humans.  Their fossils were found in today's Europe and Asia, and they date back to a geological era referred to as Pleistocene, a period from over 2.5 million years ago to 11,700 years ago. Their name comes from Neander Valley in Germany where it was first found.  According to a publication in 2010, 1-4 percent of genome of people in Europe and Asia was contributed by Neanderthals via interbreeding.  A recent NOVA program, provides more history, science findings, and reasons as to why we might have underestimated Neanderthal's intelligence by thinking of them as our cave men cartoon characters!


References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/decoding-neanderthals.html

Ebn e Sina

Ebn e Sina, or as known to westerners Avicenna, was a Persian man of knowledge and wisdom for his era.  He was born in a village close to Bukhara, in today's Uzbekistan, buried in Hamedan, Iran, and wrote his books and article, in topics ranging from astronomy to medicine,  in his era's scholarly language, Arabic.  So, today many from Uzbaks to Iranians and the Islamic world take pride in him as their own.  What I did not know and learned recently was that he is on bills of Tajikistan of all places!

Why do not  Iranians honor their scientists, scholars, and history in such ways?

Science-Fiction Tales, Today's Reality

I just saw this link that reviews impressive scientific discoveries, innovations, and events that occurred in 2012.  Some are jaw-dropping and mind blowing.  Read this for yourself and tell which one you find most impressive and unbelievable?  Or which one is your favorite?

I did not know we have found a planet, 4 times the size of Earth, made of pure diamond!  Did you? (see #19)  Or that there is a planet orbiting four stars not one! (#26) I am so happy that now there is a way for burnt victim's skin to heal and recover (see # 6 )  and a chance for blind to see again (#20)!And one day I may just get my dream house by designing it in a computer and pushing the print bottom! (# 9)

Reference:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2

New Year's Lesson

Happy New Year!  You thought I have disappeared? No, I have just had a slow start of the year for this blog, and I am catching up now.  The first lesson of the year, or the last one of last year, was actually related to how new year's eve is celebrated.  As preparations were made and having Champagne for midnight was expected, I was faced with sparkling white wine, and hence a discussion of it being or not being the same as Champagne!  Well, as it turns out, Champagne is the sparking white wine made from grapes of the Champagne region in France, and that is what makes it special because the French made this law!  So, that sparking white wine qualifies for celebrations!  Cheers!

p.s. Homework, what is the difference between Champagne and Prosecco? 

References:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkling_wine
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne