Carnival of Space 158

[GEO Code personal Welcome]

Its been a while since I hosted the Carnival - No, I haven't been hiding away on a tidally split blue-green planet held together by carbon nano-fibre tree roots. Not wanting to open a "Pandora's box" ;-), I've just been busy. So thanks Fraser for appointing an Australian host for the Carnival in the week Hayabusa touches down in the Australian Desert.
[Image: Flight path of NASA DC-8 Hayabusa re-entry observation mission.]

If you are new here, a “Blog Carnival” is a whistle stop tour of Blogs around a particular community of interest – in this case Astronomy and Space. It features the best and most interesting highlights of this week’s blog posts from the contributors to the carnival. The purpose is to share, develop, encourage and network with those of a similar interest. For back-issues of earlier carnivals click here. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it.

Its been a big week for Japan with "three from three" in as many days. Ikaros deployed its solar sails, Hayabusa made it all the way to home base and to top things off - Japan had a great win over the powerful Cameroon football team in the World Cup.


This week AARTScope ran a live blog of the Hayabusa return with over 200 visitors dropping by to check-out the live action. So lets start this week with Space Missions.

Space Missions!
Cheap Astronomy among other things, produces high quality Podcasts, and this week Steve Nerlich gives an extensive preview to the return of Hayabusa covering the full seven years of the mission.

Brian Wang from Next Big Future Blog covers the
"inverse origami" of unfolding and deploying the IKAROS solar sail as thin as spider silk.


[Youtube Video from the JAXA Channel]

Bruce Cordell's 21st Century Waves doesn't "drop the ball" by asking "Can the UK Lead the New Space Age?" [For those who hate Football - my last world cup gag].

Aron Sora seeks to create a paradox on Habitation Intention by suggesting we need a reverse doomsday clock tracking how far away we are getting from being a Space fareing society. A bit of thinly veiled activism. I love it!!!

Adam Crowl at Crowlspace does the math on the business case for Space Based Solar Power. The thinking seems to be gather the power in space then transfer and distribute on the ground.

Every organization/industry needs to learn and develop. Part of that journey is having a strong organizational memory. David Portree editor of Beyond Apollo and Beyond Shuttle makes a strong contribution to our organizational memory of space missions by carefully documenting the historical evolution of various space programs. David meticulously traces the decision points and tension between politics and science through out the journey. Some of those decisions sound vaguely familiar and relevent today. This week David covers the evolution of space station design throughout the 60s and 70s, the roadblocks and decision points and challenges along the way. Can you spot how many of the McDonnell concepts have made it through to today's Space Station.

Finally in Weird Sciences, Bruce Leeeowe known for his "theoretical approach to the space dimension and extraterrestrial life", discusses what every mission planner needs to know - the best contingency plan if you should encounter the scenario where your Spaceship's warp drive core is declared irretrievable. Bruce uses known science to push the boundaries of what just, might, be possible.....one day! Bruce also has a post that asks the question - "How old could entities be?"


[Youtube Video: NASA's video of Hayabusa "mothership" and landing pod re-entering the atmosphere]
l
Hayabusa was the highlight of the week and actualy lived up to the expectation, which now brings us to Hard Science.

Hard Science!
Nancy Atkinson, Senior Editor of Universe Today, continues the Japanese theme, discussing some of Shimizu's mega space projects. The Japanese Space community have clearly demonstrated their ability to achieve amazing results......what are they thinking of next?

Paul Gilster's Centauri Dreams Blog covers the amazing latest research on β Pictoris produced by the ESO team. Not sure what is more exciting - the findings or the capabilities of ESO's Very large telescope and the Adonis instrument.

David Bigwood presents a a collection of images from the Lunar Planetary Imager....some great potential screensavers and desktop backgrounds among them.


The Chandra X-Ray team at Harvard celebrate the life and research of Geoffrey Burbidge and the legacy of his research on the enormous energies involved in violent events in gallactic nuclei. They also present a new image of CH Cyg that is fascinating, as it maps color data from three different telescopes to RGB creating an amazing insight into the behavior of CH Cyg.

Social Scene!
Robert Pearlman, Editor of CollectSPACE, puts on a Tuxedo to cover awards ceremony that appointed four new inductees to the US Astronaut's Hall of Fame.


Thanks for joining us for Carnival of Space #158. June 16 2010.