COCKPIT Video launch May 31 2008 Space Shuttle STS124

DSC : When We Left Earth : The Shuttle

DSC : When We Left Earth : Home In Space

THHAD test passed!

HT here at 33 minutes.

James Hansen and his 20th year of AGW

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

To quote Chicken Little, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"
From the Guardian here.

Phoenix Mars Landing: Nerves and Joy

Discovery is home!

I almost caught ET, and he was about yeh big!

Phoenix soil sample

From NASA
This is the first sample taken for analysis here.

This image taken by the Optical Microscope on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows soil sprinkled from the lander's Robot Arm scoop onto a silicone substrate. The substrate was then rotated in front of the microscope. This is the first sample collected and delivered for instrumental analysis onboard a planetary lander since NASA's Viking Mars missions of the 1970s. It is also the highest resolution image yet seen of Martian soil.

DSC : When We Left Earth : Landing The Eagle

DSC : When We Left Earth : Ordinary Supermen

GLAST Launch

Phoenix gets to "Shake it's Booty!"

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander was not the only one doing the shaking.

An image from the Phoenix lander shows two trenches it has dug in the Martian soil.

Scientists operating the spacecraft broke into song and dance Wednesday after learning that their latest effort to shake lumps of Martian soil into a tiny testing oven worked.

Mission scientist William Boynton, who leads the oven experiment, recalled how he danced to the disco tune "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" after announcing the good news to his team.

"The dirt finally did start to flow, and we actually got a full oven," said Boynton, of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "So that problem is now behind us."

Mars and McCain

He said he "would be willing to spend more taxpayers' dollars" to continue the program but argued that NASA must do a better job of inspiring the American public, as when it sent a man to the moon in 1969.

McCain said one of his favorite books as a child had been Ray Bradbury's 1950 novel "The Martian Chronicles," about humans colonizing the Red Planet.

"I am intrigued by a man on Mars and I think that it would excite the imagination of the American people if we can say, 'Hey, here's what it looks like," he said.

"We know that now, and here's what may be there and let's all join in that project. I think Americans would be very willing to do that."

Inspire us and lead us unto the heavens.