Darren Straight’s Blog

With a March 2007 spaceflight in hand, American space tourist-in-training Charles Simonyi celebrated with a launch of his own Thursday as he debuted a personal website where he’ll document his trek to the International Space Station (ISS).

Simonyi [image], 58, is now set to launch towards the ISS on March 9, 2007 aboard a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft that will also ferry two Expedition 15 cosmonauts to the orbital laboratory. He plans to lay down his training and flight experiences on the Internet at his website: www.charlesinspace.com.

“I want to share all that I learn with everybody, especially with kids so that they may become more involved with space sciences,” said Simonyi, a former Microsoft software developer and co-founder of Intentional Software Corp., during a Thursday press conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. “I am very honored and excited to be joining the Soyuz TMA-10 mission.”

Via: Yahoo News

About 2,500 astronomers and experts who meet today in Prague the Czech capital for the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) general assembly have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

Pluto had been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh. So to now have pluto effectively airbrushed out of school and university textbooks is something that I think is quite unreal as there always used to been nine planets!

The astronomers at the IAU meeting voted by raising their yellow ballot papers for a count. And then after counting the votes the IAU resolution announced “The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune”

Read more about this news over at the BBC News Website!

Update: The Resolution is as follows from the IAU Website:

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that “planets” and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A “planet”¹ is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape² , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects³ except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar-System Bodies”.

——–
¹The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
²An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.
³These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

NASA has now finally admited that they have lost the original moon landing footage of the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon which took place in July 1969.

The magnetic tapes were originally stored at the US National Archives but 2612 boxes, including the Apollo recordings, were later returned to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, Maryland but the problem is that many of those involved in archiving the original tapes have moved on, retired or passed away, so no one really knows if they are there at all and if there not there where are they.

The losing of the tapes of course dosent help NASA at all as there are those who believe that this proves that the moon landings themselves were a fabrication, concocted to help America win the space race during the height of the cold war.

So let’s see if they eventually turn up or not as if they find them they will be able to covert the original magnetic tape footage to digital.

Watch this news at More4News.

Astronomers are gathering in the Czech capital, Prague, hoping to define exactly what counts as a planet. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hopes to settle the question of Pluto, which was first spotted in 1930.

Experts are divided over whether Pluto - further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System - deserves the title.

The stakes were raised when a bigger planet-type body, known as 2003 UB313, was discovered by a US astronomer.

Any decision to downgrade Pluto would send shockwaves through the scientific community, instantly outdate textbooks, and change how the basics of the Solar System are taught in schools.

There are suggestions the scientists could decide to include Pluto in a new classification system that marks it out as different to the eight larger planets.

Via: BBC News

Space Adventures the company that blasted the first space tourists into orbit is now offering future clients the chance to do space walks, but not without an extra cost of $15m (£8m) that of which is on top of the $20m cost of the flight.

Private space explorers will get to have about 1.5 hour accompanied extra-vehicular-activity (EVA) outside the International Space Station (ISS) along with an lengthened stay on the ISS from 10 days to between 16 and 18 but this would require additional training.

Via: BBC News

It’s now been 10 years since the cloning of Dolly the Sheep at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland, where she lived between 5th July 1996 to the 14th February 2003.

But the creator of Dolly the Sheep, Professor Ian Wilmut, has now said that he is “disappointed” that Britain did not develop cloning technology involving animals, as more could have been done to to ensure the UK benefited from the breakthrough.

As now places like Japan and America are benefiting from yet another technolgy that was created here but is not being used at all.

The Space Shuttle Discovery has now launched successfully from the Kennedy Space Center on the 4th of July 2006 (US Independence Day) at 1438 EDT (1838 GMT) heading it’s way to the International Space Station (ISS).

However though it was a successfully launch, NASA is luckey to be lauching at all as this is the first shuttle flight of 2006 and only the second since the catastrophic loss of the Columbia orbiter three years ago.

So as you can imagine this launch was a very crucial one, especially as on Monday a small breakage was then found in the insulating foam of the shuttle’s external fuel tank.

This of course caused people to believe that the shuttle should not be launched just in case the enviable happens, however NASA officials said the defect posed no risk to the vehicle and the mission was an all go.

I watched it live earlier and all go it was, right on time as well which was great!

Now let’s just hope that the Space Shuttle Discovery’s return home to the Kennedy Space Center on the 16th of July 2006 is a successful one.

For those of you who missed it live you can now watch a reply on Msn Videos here.

More news available at the Official NASA Site and BBC News

Image above: Discovery lift offs from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo credit: NASA

I think I remember seing something about Genpets posted ages ago on some forum, but as I was just reminded about it after seeing it posted on Miel’s Blog I thought I might as well post it here as well.

Say Hello to the all New Genpets™ from Bio.Genica!
The Genpets™ are Pre-Packaged, Bioengineered pets implemented today!

That’s right, Genpets are not toys or robots. They are living, breathing genetic animals.

We use a process called “Zygote Micro Injection” which is quickly becoming a favourable method to combine DNA, or to insert certain proteins from different species.

Don’t forget to buy me one!

Check out this impresive CGI-animated meteorite collision simulation video, it’s pretty cool but scary if you ask me.

The diameter of the meteorite is slightly bigger than the breadth of Honshu Japan. The collision point is located at the 3,000km south from Japan in the ocean. The velocity of the meteorite is 70,000km/h

Via: TecheBlog | A Welsh View

For the first time since Apollo, NASA will be sending a rocket to the moon for the deployment of a probe in 2008!

April 10, 2006 — NASA announced today it will send a rocket to crash into the moon, an early step to delivering the first astronauts to the planet since the last Apollo missions more than 30 years ago. 

The rocket, its designers hope, will crash near the moon’s south pole in 2008.  It should blast out a crater about a hundred feet wide and 15 feet deep.  A 2,000-pound robotic probe, launched from Earth by the rocket, should fly behind, passing through the plume of debris kicked up by the impact, to take measurements of the crater and see what is in it. 

The measuring probe — called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS — will be cobbled together largely from leftover parts from other probes.  The mission will cost about $80 million, which is very low budget by space standards. 

Scientists and engineers are especially interested to find out if ice is mixed in with the lunar soil.  The results from an earlier mission in the 1990s, called the Lunar Prospector, suggested a large amount was, especially in the floor of craters near the lunar pole, where sunlight never reaches to melt it.

“We can directly measure water ice, and then we can fly right through the plume,” said project manager Daniel Andrews.  Engineers believe much of the debris from the crash would be kicked as much as 35 miles above the moon’s surface.  It should be visible to amateur astronomers on Earth.  Up to a dozen Earth-based telescopes will be used determine if there are telltale signs of water, and they will get a second chance when the LCROSS probe also crashes after transmitting its data. 

Astronauts on the Moon by 2018?

If President Bush’s “vision for space exploration,” announced in 2004, is to succeed, NASA would very much need to take advantage of resources it can find on the moon.  If there is ice to be found, it can be used for drinking water for astronauts and as coolant for equipment. It can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen — ingredients for rocket fuel that need not be brought from Earth. 

Via: ABC News