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