October 2008 – astroengine.com

‘The Hills’ Girls Suffer LHC Information Overload

"Why are they doing that?" The Hills Girls bravely confront the LHC and the Big Bang (E! Channel) — 'Why are they doing that?' The Hills Girls bravely confront the LHC and the Big Bang (E! Channel)

Superb! The Large Hadron Collider has barged its oversized supercooled magnets into the very popular US teenie drama, “The Hills.”

Now I’ve heard it all. Not only did the LHC grand switch-on event appear as headline news on every newspaper, website, TV and radio news channel back on September 10th, the LHC has now been worked into the script of The Hills.

The program usually deals with fever-pitch relationship battles between the cast of over-privileged teenagers who shop and fill their days saying “yeah… that’s cute.” For the vast majority of the world who may not have seen the show, imagine a hoard of Paris Hilton clones, struggling by on the mean streets of the Beverley Hills (having just moved from that other well-known dive, Laguna Beach) dressed in Prada, sipping tall-skinny-chai-lattes, moaning about boys. And don’t get me started on the guys, just think “metro-sexual” with a heavy dose of Boy George thrown in…
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Carnival of Space Week 77 – Tomorrow is Here

Admiral Kirk (William Shatner at his best) removes his specs, Lt. Saavik (an impossibly young Kirstie Alley) looks scared.... it could only be The Wrath of Kahn, the classic 1982 Star Trek movie. — Admiral Kirk (William Shatner at his best) removes his specs, Lt. Saavik (an impossibly ~~thin~~ young Kirstie Alley) looks scared.... it could only be The Wrath of Kahn, the classic 1982 Star Trek movie.

For this week’s edition of the Carnival of Space, Tim Neale at the Tomorrow is Here takes us on a journey from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn, to Dave Mosher’s review of BLAST!, to Astropixie’s spooky skies, and all the way to building interstellar beacons with Centauri Dreams (amongst a hoard of other quality articles from the space blogosphere).

From Astroengine.com, I added the article that paralysed my website for an afternoon earlier this week, One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack – enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

Phoenix is Alive! Just in Time for Halloween

Steve the Cat celebrates Halloween on the Phoenix Mars Lander (NASA/SteveTheCat.com)

After an uncertain couple of days, NASA has regained contact with the ailing Mars lander. Yesterday, scientists announced they were having difficulty communicating with Phoenix after the on board electronics were switched into “safe mode” on Tuesday. It seems likely that the robot was switched into this low-energy state due to the increasingly cold weather — plus a Sun-blocking dust storm — triggering a low-power fault.

Although scientists were concerned they may not regain communications with the lander, they were able get in touch with Phoenix late on Thursday during a two hour period when the lander’s electronics were powered up. Now scientists know that Phoenix will automatically reboot itself every 19 hours, and then power up again for two hours to carry out very limited science duties.

NASA was able to transmit commands via NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter which passed overhead during this two-hour period of opportunity. This goes to show how little solar energy is being collected from the meagre sunlight as Mars enters winter (the Sun is very low on the Martian horizon, and it will soon drop out of sight, sealing the fate of Phoenix).

However, before Phoenix succumbs to a low energy coma, NASA is trying to get as many science activities out of it before it is frozen solid.

It also seems fitting that the highly successful NASA mission should come back from the brink of death on Halloween. So, “Happy Halloween Phoenix!” We all hope you last a few more weeks…

Source: AP

Has Phoenix… Died?

Could this be the end of Phoenix? (NASA/JPL) — The end of the line? (NASA/JPL)

Late on Tuesday, NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander entered “safe mode.”

Before this, NASA scientists were working to conserve power by shutting down non-critical systems. By powering down instrumentation such as the heaters that warm Phoenix’s robotic arm, valuable energy was hoped to be saved, perhaps giving the lander some extra time to carry out its final experiments before complete loss of sunlight as Mars’ northern hemisphere enters winter. But it seems that a possible dust storm and the falling temperatures (down to -96°C) may have caused a low-power fault, triggering the precautionary safe-mode.

Although scientists were optimistic about communicating with its on board systems, to send commands to bring Phoenix back online, it seems time (and energy) has run out…
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High Resolution Earth Rise Video by Kaguya (SELENE)

A little bit of beautiful - the Earth rises over the lunar horizon (JAXA)

Using its High Definition Television (HDTV) camera, the Japanese lunar probe Kaguya captured an astounding video of the Earth slowly rising above the lunar horizon. The video was actually released at the start of this month, but it has only just come to my attention. The video was recorded on September 30th, as the probe orbited 100 km above the Moon. Stunning.

See the tele-view “Full-Earth Rise” »

See the wide-angle Earth-set »

Read more about “Full-Earth Rise” »

Astroengine.com Selected for “Top 10 Space Blogs”

A huge thank you goes to Dave Mosher at the excellent blog Space Disco for adding Astroengine.com to the Blogs.com “Top 10 Space Blogs”! Not only did my site make it into the top 10, by sheer alphabetical luck, Astroengine is also right at the top. Awesome! I’ll wear my badge with pride.

Dave, I owe you a pint some time!

Cheers, Ian

The Pessimism About Modern Space Flight

Epic fail? I think not (<a href='http://current.com/items/89164753_epic_fail_rocket_carrying_three_satellites_crashes_into_pacific_ocean'>current.com</a>) — Epic fail? I think not (credit: current.com, edit: Ian O'Neill)

On September 28th, Elon Musk proved he wasn’t a dreamer and blasted the world’s first commercial rocket — Falcon 1 — into Earth orbit. SpaceX have put their previous launch failures behind them, rightfully filing them under “learning curve.”

The team at NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission control have started to switch off instrumentation on the robotic lander after five months of astounding science (even after surviving the “7-minutes of terror” on May 25th, finding proof of water, overcoming technical issues and multiplying our understanding of the chemistry on an alien planet). Plus the armada of satellites orbiting the Red Planet. Oh yes, and those crazy rovers that just keep on rollin’.

The New Horizons Pluto mission has just passed its 1000th day on the epic journey to Pluto, Charon and the Kuiper Belt. The Cassini probe is still doing its mission orbiting Saturn (since 1997). Oh, and the European Venus Express doing its quiet cruise around Earth’s evil twin planet.

The International Space Station is still going strong, proving on every day that passes that humans can live in space (no matter how difficult it is, we can do it, months at a time — but we need to work harder at zero-G plumbing!). Other nations are pushing into space too; China carried out its first spacewalk in September, India blasted its first lunar mission into space last week and the Japanese lunar orbiter just broke the bad news that there ain’t no ice in them thar craters…

…lest not forget the robust Russian Soyuz space vehicle, having just reached its 100th flight!
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The Universe Today is Unbanned from Digg.com!

Does Digg love the Universe Today again?

Great news! It would appear that after only day one of the campaign to have the Universe Today un-banned from Digg.com, somebody in the admin staff was obviously paying attention (unless they are an avid reader of the Universe Today website too), and realised their mistake. Digg.com is now allowing articles from the Universe Today to be re-listed and dugg!.

I’d like to think that this was all down to blogging power — after all, this little space blogger was blamed for the whole NASA-Phoenix-Perchlorate saga! — but I’m just really happy that the guys at Digg have redeemed themselves a little.

This whole episode does however highlight an ongoing problem with banned sites, I hope it will help to refine Digg’s policy in the future.

Have a look at the first article to be Dugg after a long absence: “More Ares I Development Problems: Is it Really That Bad?” (one of mine!)

Universe Today Banned from Digg.com

Universe Today has been banned from Digg — Universe Today? Banned??

The Universe Today website has been banned from the social bookmarking site Digg.com. This might come as a surprise to many as the Universe Today is a great source of space, astronomy, science and educational news. Why would such a great resource be banned from a site that is based on community participation?

UT has been captained for many years by its founder and publisher Fraser Cain – I remember first signing up to the UT newsletter in 2001 – and the whole aim of the site is to reach out to Internet users, distributing the best space-based news a website can bring. Surely this is the type of site Digg would want to be promoting? Apparently not.
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Digg Effect Destroys Astroengine (But Healing Now)

Wow, what a stressful day! On writing One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack last night, I had no idea about the consequences. This morning the article exploded onto the front page of Digg.com, sending a flood of traffic into Astroengine.com. Although my bandwidth is more than capable of dealing with the situation, the server was quite literally paralysed, causing the technicians at GoDaddy.com to pull the plug (can’t blame them, apparently all the other sites on the shared server were knocked out).

I’ll post a more detailed post soon, but should anyone want to know the best course of action when dealing with an uncontrollable flood of traffic, here’s what I had to do:

Modify my site’s .htaccess file to block traffic flooding in from Digg.com (I used the tips posted on JavaScript Kit for this).
Install the WP Super Cache plugin for WordPress.

The first measure was to stem the flow of traffic from the referrer causing the server outage. Once the relentless barrage of Digg users were blocked, the GoDaddy admin staff were reassured the problem wouldn’t reoccur if they put Astroengine.com back online. The second measure is a longer-term solution until I migrate the site to a better server. WP Super Cache creates html versions of Astroengine’s php pages, thus bypassing the execution of php scripts every time someone visits the site (vastly reducing the load on the server).

Thanks to Fraser (my publisher at Universe Today) for helping me out and giving these tips when dealing with a Digg explosion.

So, now I am going shopping. It’s fantastic to have these bursts of visitors, but the time is coming when I’ll need to upgrade. I’m either going to go the route of buying virtual-dedicated or a dedicated server. Any suggestions for which hosting providers have the best service/price? I’m most likely going to stay with GoDaddy, but I’m open to suggestions.

Apologies for dropping offline today, hopefully this will be the last interruption to service!

Cheers, Ian