International Space Station Clogged Toilet...

And who would have thought NASA would have to deal with toilet problems aboard a high-tech space station? Maybe I'm the only one that sees the irony in this; although I'm not surprised. I'm certain that the operator instructions for the ISS Toilet could fill the volume of one encyclopedia book. You're not talking just simple plumbing anymore. These types of toilets rely on vacuum equipment, air flow, and air/water separators in order to properly dispose of waste.

Until fixed, the current supply of Apollo bags for fecal collection may have to suffice! If you have some extra time, and this interests you, than you are in luck... You can read all about it here!*Images courtesy of NASA.

I'm on Mars...

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars this past Sunday. I was channel surfing at the time, and just by happenstance tuned into the Sci-Fi channel and saw it live from the mission control. This stuff interests me tremendously. We have so much we can learn from our Solar System. Learning is a big part of our human race.

My name — along with a quarter million others from around the world — is now on the surface of Mars. Also on the disk is Visions of Mars, a treasure trove of literature and art — from classic works by Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury to Orson Welles' radio retelling of "The War of the Worlds" to a special audio recording of Carl Sagan delivering a message to the future.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will investigate a site in the far north of Mars. The mission will seek to answer questions about that part of Mars and help resolve broader questions about the planet. The key questions Phoenix will address concern water and conditions that could support life.

The Phoenix landing region has water ice in soil close to the surface, which NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered for much of the high-latitude terrain in both the north and south hemispheres of Mars.

Phoenix will dig down to the icy layer. It will examine soil in place at the surface, at the icy layer and in between. It will scoop up samples for analysis by its onboard instruments. One key instrument will check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off. Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the dissolution products. Cameras and microscopes will provide information on scales spanning eight powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into the period at the end of this sentence to a survey of the landscape by a mast-mounted camera. A weather station will provide information about atmospheric processes in an arctic region where a coating of carbon-dioxide ice comes and goes with the seasons.

*Image and portions reproduced by Permission following NASA copyright guidelines.

For the Love of Space...

Image Courtesy of NASA

Do you enjoy watching the night sky? Have you ever been known to gander towards the heavens, watching the stars slowly pass above you? Do you occasionally study the moon, it's phases, and where it is in the sky? Do you occasionally set aside some time to and plan ahead for meeting up with friends to watch the next major meteor shower? And have you ever set your eyes in one part of the sky, just to see if one of the 'stars' is quickly moving directly overhead? If you have said "Yes!", to any of those questions, then I would like to say hello to you, as an astronomer friend. I have always had an obsession with the night sky.

My Dad first explained to me when I was 8 years old, that the star I was seeing moving quickly overhead, wasn't really a star at all; but a man made satellite! "Wow!", I remember saying to myself. It just wasn't comprehendable to me. I relate my feelings then as to what my Grandfathers Mom must have thought many years back. My Grandfather Robert told me that when he was just a kid, he was outside the back porch one summer night watching the stars. His mom was inside doing the dinner dishes, when Robert started yelling excitedly for his mom to come outside. In a panic, she raced out the back porch and asked Robert what all the commotion was about? "Mom, look there...", he yelled pointing in the direction of a moving star. "That's a satellite! We put that into space, and it's over 200 miles above us, moving at over 15,000 miles per hour!!! We can see it because the satellite is reflecting the sun's rays!" His mom studied the moving star for a moment, and then looked at Robert, paused, and then took the dish rag and hit it over his head exclaiming, "Robert... you need to quit dreaming up these wild things, get back inside and do your homework!". Little did my Grandfather's mom know, but he had just studied about satellites in school a few weeks before!

Just as the our Ocean has so much left unknown, so does our outer space; if not more! When viewing pictures that the Hubble has recently taken, I forget that just a square centimeter of that picture of a Magellanic Cloud is really light years across! I forget that when I'm looking up at the stars at night, that I'm really seeing the stars as they were hundreds and thousands if not millions of years ago! Our view of the night sky is truly the only time-machine that we have here on earth! There is so much out there that we can't and don't know. It's an awesome balance of nature and our planet Earth is only a minuscule spec of space dust caught up in the balance of the gargantuan heavenly orbit.

For those that have even the slightest interest in Space and all that it has to offer, I suggest visiting Spaceweather.com. Dr. Tony Phillips pins the site daily, and always has something new and interesting to share.

Delmar's going to the moon...

You never know what Delmar's going to do next. He's a crafty little fellow and if I told you his latest trick, you wouldn't believe me anyway.

So I'll go ahead and tell you... Delmar signed up to have his name flown to the moon. He's always searching on the internet for weird and interesting things and I feel he hit this one right on!

You can visit NASA's Web Site and sign up to have your name flown to the moon aboard the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft.

The deadline is June 27th, 2008. LRO is scheduled to launch in late 2008.

Don't tell Delmar, but he thinks he is going for real! I don't feel like breaking his little pug heart just quite yet.