[VIDEO] HERE’S WHAT NEW HORIZONS’ PLUTO FLYBY WILL LOOK LIKE

NOBODY IS GOING to see New Horizons fly through the Pluto system. At least, not in real time. But thanks to the power of planetary physics you can watch the space probe pass by on your computer right now. NASA’s awesome visualization team has loaded the flight plan into their Eyes On The Solar System app.

The video above shows 8 hours of the flyby, speeding by at 10 minutes per second. The inset window shows what New Horizons’ suite of instruments see (and which instruments are currently active). And those images are updated as new data comes in.

“That is the best map of Pluto, and if they release another one tonight we’ll update it immediately,” says Doug Ellison, a NASA visualization producer. Like the rest of us, he’s really anticipating that new imagery. “It will be nice to put a map on Charon, it always sucks to have these gray potatoes in space.”

But if you’re really antsy for some real time communications, Ellison recommends you fire up DSN Now. This tool shows active communications from all NASA spacecraft. No need to burn your retinas waiting for New Horizons to perk up. The first communications post-flyby are scheduled to arrive at 9:07pm ET on July 14.

Via: Wired

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The climate warming pause goes AWOL (or not)

Science mag is publishing a blockbuster paper today, on June 4.  Oh boy!  Get ready to watch yet another big fight about climate change – this time mainly among different groups of climate alarmists.  Is there a “pause”?  Did global climate really stop warming during the last dozen years, 18 years, or even 40 years – in spite of rising levels of the greenhouse (GH) gas carbon dioxide?

The renowned National Climate Data Center (NCDC), a division of NOAA located in Asheville, NC, claims that the widely reported (and accepted) temperature hiatus (i.e., near-zero trend) is an illusion – just an artifact of data analysis – and that the global climate never really stopped warming.If true, what a blessing that would be for the UN-IPCC – and for climate alarmists generally, who have been under siege to explain the cause of the pause.

This paper is turning out to be a “big deal.”The publisher of Science has even issued a special press release, promoting the NCDC claim of continued slow but steady warming.

Of course, NCDC-NOAA and Science may end up with egg on their collective faces.It does look a little suspicious that NCDC arrived at this earth-shaking “discovery” after all these years, after “massaging” its own weather-station data, just before the big policy conference in December in Paris that is supposed to slow the rise of CO2 from the burning of energy fuels, coal, oil, and gas.

Now watch the sparks fly -- as there are two major constituencies that have a vested interest in the pause:

There are at least two rival data centers that may dispute the NCDC analysis:

the Hadley Centre in England and the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).In fact, Hadley’s partner, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was the first to announce, on the BBC, the existence of a pause in global warming.

Via: American Thinker

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Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.

Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. (Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.)

NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.

Via: Forbes

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If The Sun Doesn’t Blast It, Comet ISON Will Soon Light Up The Sky

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BALTIMORE (WJZ)— A comet looping behind the sun could emerge this fall as a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, or it may not. Mike Schuhhas more on what he calls the “intergalactic snowball.”

Educators have a different take.

“It’s called Comet ISON,” said Jim O’Leary of the Maryland Science Center.

NASA provided an image of ISON (agove). It has a small head and a big tail.

“That tail can get tens of millions of miles long, so it’s huge,” O’Leary said.

Three miles is large enough to comfortably fit between the shores spanned by the Bay Bridge and its approach ramps.

“It could be the comet of the century,” O’ Leary said. “That is what some people are calling it, and we’re not that far into the century you know.”

It’s certain to light up the winter sky. That is, unless it doesn’t. They don’t know if the sun will blast it to shreds.

Via: CBS Balitmore

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Arctic sea ice up 60 percent in 2013

About a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice in 2013 than in 2012, a whopping 60 percent increase -- and a dramatic deviation from predictions of an "ice-free Arctic in 2013," the Daily Mail noted.

Arctic sea ice averaged 2.35 million square miles in August 2013, as compared to the low point of 1.32 million square miles recorded on Sept. 16, 2012, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. A chart published Sept. 8 by NSIDC shows the dramatic rise this year, putting total ice cover within two standard deviations of the 30-year average.

Noting the year over year surge, one scientist even argued that "global cooling" was here.

"We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped,” Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin told London’s Mail on Sunday.

The surge in Arctic ice is a dramatic change from last year’s record-setting lows, which fueled dire predictions of an imminent ice-free summer. A 2007 BBC report said the Arctic could be ice free in 2013 -- a theory NASA still echoes today. 

Via: Fox News

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Astronauts Won’t Go To Space Until At Least 2021, NASA Inspector General Says

(CNSNews.com) – Lack of money and testing delays mean NASA will not be able to send astronauts into orbit until at least 2021, according to a report released Aug. 15 by the NASA Office of Inspector General.

“NASA plans to delay delivery of several systems required to ‘human rate’ the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and as a result, the Agency does not expect the spacecraft to be available for crewed operations until at least 2021,” said Paul K. Martin, NASA’s inspector general.

Under current funding levels, astronauts will be limited to orbital missions, because the systems necessary for surface exploration have not been developed, NASA said.

Given the amount of time and money necessary to develop these systems, it is unlikely that NASA will be able to conduct surface exploration missions until the late 2020s at the earliest, NASA said.

The Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle is being developed as a result of the “NASA Authorization Act of 2010.”

The Act set the goal of achieving full operational capacity for the MPCV, not later than Dec. 21, 2016.

The report said the lack of funding is forcing managers to complete the most immediate tests, while development and testing has been delayed on other important but less time-sensitive aspects of the program

Via: CNS News

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Historic NASA facilities going to waste

The space agency has an unusual problem: space.

A recent review of NASA’s land holdings on earth revealed a new challenge for the agency: poorly maintained, aging facilities once used for research and development or space vehicle construction, now essentially useless.

NASA spends about $1.1 billion annually on maintenance and upkeep of its more than 5,400 buildings, landing strips and other unique sites; but approximately 9 percent of its real property assets aren’t being used, NASA told FoxNews.com. The solution, according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG): lease them

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Kennedy leases a clean room where Apollo capsules were readied 40 years ago to Lockheed Martin. Boeing is building space taxis in a processing hangar where shuttles were once routinely readied to soar. And there are plenty of others, from Rolls-Royce and Google to local schools and, in areas where businesses aren’t interested, parks, gardens and visitor centers.

But not enough, according to Paul K. Martin, NASA Inspector General.

“Few incentives exist for NASA to identify underutilized property as unnecessary to its mission needs,” he concluded in the August report.

Olga Dominguez, NASA’s assistant administrator for the office of strategic infrastructure, agreed that the agency wasn’t 100 percent sure how many buildings and facilities were unusued. Part of the challenge, she said, was the changing nature of the space agency’s mission. As NASA has refocused from the space shuttle to the private space industry, its needs have changed as well.

“Because our mission has gone through such extensive changes, all of these new programs -- commercial crew, commercial space -- all of these have different requirements,” she told FoxNews.com. “So the space needs have changes every year.”

“Right now, well we think we might need [a facility] and then seven months later, no we don’t.”

NASA is the ninth largest land owner in the federal government, with more than 100,000 acres that occupy 44 million square feet and are estimated to cost $29 billion to replace.

Via: Fox News

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NASA rover 'Curiosity' lands on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. –  In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet's past.

Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory late Sunday after the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever built signaled it had survived a harrowing plunge through the thin Mars atmosphere.

"Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen. "We're safe on Mars."

Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth at 10:32 p.m. PDT, Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.

"We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful," said engineer Adam Steltzner, who led the team that devised the tricky landing routine.

Via: Fox News

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NASA spacecraft speeding toward a landing on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — After an 8 1/2-month voyage through space, NASA's souped-up Mars spacecraft zoomed toward the red planet for what the agency hopes will be an epic touchdown.

The fiery punch through the tenuous Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph Sunday night marks the beginning of "seven minutes of terror" as the Curiosity rover aims for a bull's-eye landing inside a massive crater near the equator.

The latest landing attempt is more nerve-racking than in the past because NASA is testing out a new routine. Curiosity will steer itself part of the way and end on a dramatic note: Dangling by cables until its six wheels touch the ground.

That's the plan at least.

"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I'm confident," Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said Saturday. "We have the A-plus team on this. They've done everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still exists."

Via: CNS News

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