Awesome Space Facts From NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130325.html
Ok every one knows about NASA, right? Well, if you don’t it controls like, all of America’s space stuff. I’m going to tell you about the curiosity rover. Ok? Yay!

The curiosity is the rover NASA is using on the planet Mars. Mars is the one next to Earth that is all reddish orange-ish. It (as far as we know) can’t sustain human life. I find this a good thing because I don’t personally want to live on an ugly, reddish wasteland but that’s just me. I’m sure some of you would be glad to but I’m going to stay here on Earth. Anyway, so in February, the curiosity had a computer glitch. Now it’s back and working again so we can still see if we can live on Mars (or if anything still lives there). I happen to know that the probe is still collecting samples and such. Sadly, if it found intelligent life there I don’t think that they would put it on the website so there is so far no extraterrestrials. Maybe the Curiosity will find some. Maybe it will just find red dust and other land forms. Unfortunately, I don’t know.

 

(Evil laugh) Now that I have gotten you interested with opinions of mine and talk of aliens, I will now only tell you a bunch of facts. Maybe if your good and keep reading I will throw some opinions in at the end. So….. keep reading please.

 

The Cureosity gathers data weather, climate, and well, red rocks. Very recently, like a week ago, it drilled into a rock for the first time. Yay, drilled rock! Ya, Mars is seaming kind of boring. Oh well. The Cureosity rover has or sort of had two computers. An A computer and a B. from my previous paragraph you know that the computer glitch messed up the rover. Well that’s why there is more then one computer. Fall back system. It also has analysers in there too. And may I remind you that this is only one rover.

 

NASA in the News: 2012 by Kaynaz S.

In LA we read a book called Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Mrs. Williams asked us to blog about some facts of NASA’s 2012 Year in Review. Here are five interesting facts I found.

  • On Dec. 12 NASA’s astronomers announced that the Hubble Space Telescope had seen further back in time than ever before and had uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3 percent of its present age.
  • For use in NASA’s future missions and by the greater aerospace community, the company’s Space Technology Program is innovating, developing, testing, and flying technology. Another project NASA continues to invest in is the idea of creating new enabling robotic technologies that aid in future exploration while also having applications here one Earth, potentially helping paraplegics walk and aiding in other medical rehabilitation efforts.
  • When the final flight of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011had landed, the other shuttles were delivered in 2012 to their new homes, where they will begin a new chapter in their careers: inspiring museum-goers of all ages to reach for the stars.
  • Approximately 42,000 students from grades 4-9 and more than 3,200 middle school teachers nationwide were enrolled in NASA’s 2012 Summer of Innovation program which provided summer learning opportunities to students and teachers. The program helped teachers improve their ability to teach Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, or STEM, content in the classroom. NASA’s education efforts in 2012 got a big step up when musician Will.i.am brought his talents when attending several events associated with the Curiosity landing on Mars.
  • Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died on Aug. 25 at age 82. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died on July 23 at age 61. NASA and the world lost two pioneering explorers.

Sources: Image- http://www.flickr.com/photos/forthebirds/, Facts- http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/YIR12/

NASA in 2012 by Sarah K

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/YIR12/

1. On August 5, 2012, NASA landed a rover named Curiosity on Mars. The rover cost $2.5 billion dollars and weighs 900 kilograms, or 1 ton. Curiosity is a six wheeled all-terrain vehicle that carries ten research instruments and seventeen separate cameras. This rover is sending back pictures Spaand samples and has been very helpful to scientists.


2. Scientists have discovered evidence of ice on Mercury. According to a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mercury since March 2012, there is frozen water on the poles of Mercury. For a long time, astronomers suspected that the shiny patches on Mercury’s poles were ice. In November, a spacecraft named MESSENGER, which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, This proves that there is frozen water on Mercury which means it might support life.


3. In July 2012, an estimate of 97% of ice sheet surface melted in Greenland. On average, about half of Greenland’s ice sheet naturally melts every summer. This extreme thawing was probably caused by an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome over Greenland.


4. Space shuttle Endeaver retired on September 21, 2012, as it toured California on the back of NASA’s modified 747 carrier aircraft. After flying over Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast, they Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood sign, Dodger Stadium, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Malibu and Santa Monica, Disneyland, The Queen Mary and USS Iowa in Long Beach harbor, and several low-level flyovers over Los Angeles International Airport before landing down on the runway.


5. NASA has designed the first spacecraft to fly astronauts beyond Earth’s orbit since the Apollo spacecrafts. Orion will orbit Earth without a crew and return through the atmosphere at speeds way faster than when astronauts last returned from the moon in 1972. The mission is planned for launch in September 2014. It will orbit the Earth twice on a track that will take it more than 3,600 miles above the ground, which is about 15 times higher than the International Space Station.

NASA- 5 facts By: Ellen C.

After looking on the NASA website, I learned a few new things. Here are 5 things I learned from NASA.

  1. On March 28, three men are targeted to launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft.
  2. NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity has been monitoring the weather since March 21 and delivered a new portion of powdered rock sample on March 23.
  3. SpaceX has confirmed that the Dragon, their spacecraft, returned safely to earth in the Pacific Ocean, a few hundred miles west of Baja, California.
  4. This week, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) released it’s first images of earth on March 18.
  5. Thanks to the Herschel space observatory, astronomers were able to discover some of the youngest stars ever made.

 

 

Leo

 Picture by me, using this as a reference
Leo is latin for “Lion.” It is  associated with the Lion of Nemea in Greek mythology, which terrrorized the town of Nemea. Heracles, as part of his seven labors, was sent to kill the beast. The lion had invulnerable skin, which meant his arrows were completely useless. It is said that Heracles went into the lion’s lair and choked it to death. Heracles went on to wear it’s skin as body armor. One of Leo’s stars, the eta Leonis, is 2,100 light years away.

Top 5 Space-Related Events of 2012

 Note: This list is not in any particular order.

1.) Curiosity
     It wouldn’t be a list about this years achievements without including Curiosity in there somewhere. In August, NASA managed to land it’s most advanced rover yet onto Mars. It also sent some pictures back from  Not putting this on the list would be a crime, because who doesn’t enjoy a good old space landing, right?

2.) Will.i.am’s transmission to mars

     On August 28, the first recorded song was sent to Mars. Singer will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame, recorded “Reach For the Stars” a song about science, particularly that of the space-ey kind. The song was made specifically to be broadcast to Mars, via Curiosity. The event took place after the team that landed the Mars Rover gave a speech to a group of kids about how the rover mission was done, and the technicals behind will.i.am’s interplanetary transmission.
3.) Ice On Mercury
     This year, NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER), or as I like to call it, the spacecraft trying too hard to get a catchy acronym, found ice on mercury. New info relesed in December proved that if the ice in Mercury’s polar region was spread over an area as large as Washington D.C., it would be 2 miles thick
4.) The Orion

     In July, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida announced a new spaceship. The Orion is designed to bring astronauts more deep into space than ever before. It also has a strong focus on ensuring the astronauts can get OUT of space, which is always a good thing to pay attention to. It also is important to note, that the first time I remember learning about this vessel and it making an impression on me was  through the Burger King toy.
5.) W.I.S.E.

     In April, it was revealed that NASA’s Wide-field Infared Survey Explorer, or W.I.S.E. was actively seeking for black holes. Not just black holes, but HUGE black holes, called blazers. They are also one of the most energetic objects in the universe. Over 200 have been found so far.

NASA Angry Birds

Don Pettit With Plusies and Eggs

nasa.gov

Space Life System

nasa.gov

On Nasa’s 2012 Year In Review, I watched a video about the video game Angry Birds Space and how it is close to real life. Don Pettit was in a real space station and was encouraged to do an Angry Birds Space Experiment. He had Angry Bird plushies and recorded a video of it all.

– Don Pettit had a Angry Bird plusie, 2 eggs, and a green pig ballon. Don took his bunjee cord and supported it across a wall.

– Then, he shot the Angry Bird and just like in the video game, the angry bird would get close to an object and orbit around it.

– “We have a Regenerative Life System which is a fancy way of saying that we got a toilet, which you use, then a machine that goes chugga, chugga, chugga , then you go to the galley and get yourself a cup of coffee. And that is exactly what you think it is.” Says Don Pettit. (Shown above in the photo.)

– The video game creators of Angry Birds Space but the physics of outer space into account because they are planets in the game which have a gravitational force which pulls the angry birds closer to the planets which they can them kill the pigs.

– At the beginning of the video, Don Pettit made a story f the big bad green pigs taking the eggs away from the angry birds. (Shown above in the photo).

2012 NASA review

Scientists have named a mysterious galaxy NGC 6872. This is thought to be made up of smaller galaxy’s that have combined together to make the biggest galaxy scientists have said. Astronauts have also located another strange but smaller galaxy which was named IC 4970, they think this odd couple of galaxy’s are located 212 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pavo. The last thing is the astronaut class of 1978 otherwise known as “The Thirty-Five New Guys” was NASA’S first new group of astronaut a since 1969!

 

 

NASA

One of the interesting facts I learned was that the Dragon X is to splash in the Pacific at 12:38 pm today. Number two a famous supernova discovered in 1604 that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Number three some of the youngest stars ever seen were found in the constellation Orion. Number four before hurricane Sandy the coast was lush and beautiful after everything dead. Finally world water day is on March, 22.

 

NASA By Elliot E.

We are reading Cosmic in LA. our teacher Mrs. Williams wants us to pick our top five favorite things that happened on NASA in 2012.

  • On December 12 NASA announced that the Hubble Telescope can see very far in space. they discovered a unseen population of seven primitive galaxies formed 13 billion years ago!
  • In July the NASA Kennedy space center in Florida had an arrival of the Orion Capsule. It will carry astronauts farther into space than ever before! There is also an abort capsule in it.
  • NASA discovered ice on Mercury! NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEocheistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) found ice on mercury!
  • IN April NASA will be hunting a class of black hole in space with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
  • In January NASA captured the best and most complete glimpse of what lies beyond the solar system! They captured it in the Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft.