Mayur's Posterous

BBC News - Voyager: Still dancing 17 billion km from Earth

 
Voyager One, Nasa  

Voyager is approaching the edge of the bubble of charged particles the Sun has thrown out into space

The extraordinary Voyager 1 spacecraft is demonstrating its nimbleness more than 30 years after leaving Earth.

At the astonishing distance of 17.4 billion km, the Nasa probe is the most far-flung object made by humans.

But it seems age and remoteness are no barriers to this veteran explorer.

Voyager is executing a series of roll manoeuvres to get one of its instruments into the optimum position to measure particles sweeping away from the Sun.

Controllers at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, report a perfect response from the probe.

"I liken Voyager like an old car," said project manager Suzanne Dodds. "It's got simple electronics, not a lot of fancy gadgets - but because of that it can operate for longer; it's not as finicky."

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 on a tour of the outer planets. Since completing that mission, it has been making the push for deep space.

The probe is heading in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy and will, in the next few years, leave the space dominated by the influence of our Sun and enter the province between the stars - interstellar space.

Scientists know that to be the case because of the way the solar wind is behaving at Voyager's current location.

This stream of charged particles forms a bubble around our Solar System known as the heliosphere. The wind travels at "supersonic" speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock.

At this point, the wind then slows dramatically and heats up in a region termed the heliosheath. Voyager has determined the velocity of the wind at its location has now slowed to zero. Very simply put, Voyager has reached the domain where the solar wind is starting to turn back on itself as it pushes up against the particles of interstellar space.

The new manoeuvres are designed to enable Voyager 1's Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument to investigate precisely what is going on around it.

"It counts the particles and measures their direction," explained Suzanne Dodds. "This will give us a much better picture of what's happening with the solar wind close to the heliopause (the "official" edge of the Solar System). It could be that as we do these measures we see its direction change. All we have out there is models and every time we get data the models don't quite fit what Voyager sees, and then we have to update the models."

On Monday this week Voyager rolled 70 degrees anticlockwise as seen from Earth from its normal orientation. It held the position by spinning gyroscopes for two hours, 33 minutes. The veteran last performed such a manoeuvre in 1990 when it took pictures of the planets it was leaving behind.

Once complete, Voyager rolled back and locked on to its guide star, Alpha Centauri.

Voyager 1 will do more roll-and-holds this week, and if the spacecraft continues to function well it will execute a series of weekly rolls to gather particle data every three months.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft which was also launched in 1977 is not quite as far from Earth. It is a mere 14 billion kilometres away. At these great distances, communication with the probes is a lengthy business. The one-way travel time for a radio message to get to Voyager 1 is now 16 hours.

"People love Voyager I think because the mission has lasted so long. We're still talking to it and it's just so far out in space; people have a real attachment to it. It did its grand tour past the planets and it just goes on, on this voyage of discovery."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

 

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Peter Gabriel - My Body Is A Cage

The last episode of House M.D. was masterclass. Call it schadenfreude but I enjoyed watching him the way he was during that episode - I like the psychology that goes into creating and maintaining dark characters on screen (when done right of course). This ep threw up a lot of questions for me - the main one being if a rational, sane person can actually make a decision to end their own life.

This is the final song in that episode, Peter Gabriel's amazing version of Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" was a perfect fit for that scene.

House M.D. is back. 

 

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Reuben Margolin- Kinetic Wave Sculptures on MAKE: television

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Doctor Cat

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The internet never fails to keep me sane.

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Where else would astronauts hang out?

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The Book Surgeon


Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.

Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms.

"My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception," he says.

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of the information fades over time. The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge."

Dettmer is originally from Chicago, where he studied at Columbia College. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

Update: Read our exclusive interview with the Book Surgeon here.















 

 

via mymodernmet

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Outkast - Prototype

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ISRO finds cave in moon, can be used as base station for astronauts

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New Delhi: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have discovered a giant underground chamber on the moon, which they feel could be used as a base by astronauts on future manned missions to moon.

An analysis by an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 revealed a 1.7-km long and 120-metre wide cave near the moon's equator that is in the Oceanus Procellarum area of the moon that could be a suitable 'base station' for future human missions.

Scientists of the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad said in a research paper published in the latest issue of Current Science that the cave provides "a safe environment from hazardous radiations, micro-meteoritic impacts, extreme temperatures and dust storms."

Scientists said identifying sites for permanent base for human settlements on the moon is important for further exploration.

"Lava tubes provide a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius in its diurnal (day-night) cycle," they said.

According to them, the lava tubes offer a dust-free environment and adapting them for human use requires minimal construction.her exploration.

 

via Silicon India

 

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