Posts Tagged ‘space’

Solar Storms —

ABC Science’s write-up about solar storms is a bit dramatic, but then they throw in this little fact: Now the electrical grids around the world are mostly old, fragile and overloaded. In the USA alone, minor solar storms already cause breakdowns to the grid that increase the cost of electricity by $500 million every 18 [...]

IAMA NASA —

Reddit has spawned a number of genres for and among its community of readers and writers. One of the most compelling of those genres is the AMA, short for “Ask Me Anything.” They are housed under the URL IAMA, which is a pun on the acronym that allows a poster to begin with “I am [...]

NASA has new spacesuits. Apparently this is the first change in design since 1992. These have their own airlocks, allowing an astronaut to dock with a space station or ship by, it seems, backing up to it, and then climbing out the back of the suit. Now, if only we had a way to get [...]

We will miss the annular solar eclipse coming up on May 20 — we are too far east and the sun will already have set — but NASA’s map tells you if you are in the right place at the right time.

Get Ready for Transit of Venus —

I can’t quite tell from the NASA illustration how well we will be able to view the transit of Venus across the face of the sun, but we are going to try. Because Venus’ transits occur in pairs, the last time this occurred was in 2004, the year our daughter was born, but it will [...]

Trash bag air craft. Essentially it’s a variation of the weather balloons with digital cameras that a number of schools and individuals have lofted. This one goes the extra mile, in terms of cost savings, and figures out how to get lift out of trash bags. (Go, Manuja Gunaratne, go.)