Topic: Technology
Rubin Observatory Brings Much Needed Joy

Rubin Observatory Brings Much Needed Joy

Ok, so we held off running this last little section while I waited to see if Vera Rubin observatory would put out a First Light press release. Rubin Observatory did not put out a first light press release. They put out a Facebook post saying “on-sky engineering tests have begun at NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory using the world’s largest digital camera!” To me, this sounds like they had first light. In fact, they went on to say, “After installing and testing the LSST Camera, we turned the telescope to the sky—a moment 20 years in the making! Thanks to the years of diligent work from our incredible...

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iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

Over the past year, we've seen a variety of different commercial missions that do things I wouldn't necessarily consider successful. We've seen lunar landers unintentionally practice gymnastics by standing on their heads and flipping over sideways. We've seen...

The Monkeys Can’t Write Hamlet

The Monkeys Can’t Write Hamlet

By New York Zoological Society — Image derived from: Chimpanzee seated at a typewriter; Public Domain. I have bad news for one of statistics favorite sayings. As the story goes, given enough time and enough monkey’s randomly pressing keys on a keyboard, the complete...

Telescopes galore: Euclid, Rubin, and Roman

Telescopes galore: Euclid, Rubin, and Roman

Back in 1998, researchers studying supernovae discovered that our universe is accelerating apart. Up until that point, it had been understood that our universe’s expansion was either going to slow to a stop, continue on as is-ish, or reverse it’s motion and collapse...

VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day

VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day

A computer generated concept image of the VIPER rover Despite what the contents of this and recent episodes might imply, my passion is for science not for spacecraft. The thing is, sometimes spacecraft are needed to do the science. And lately, I and many others have...

The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet

The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet

As a nerdy member of GenX, I can state with pride and shame that I watched Buck Rogers in the early 80s and was constantly fascinated by all the weird ways their writers found for fictional 24th century scientists to misunderstand the relics from the 20th century....

Hubble Down to One Gyro

Hubble Down to One Gyro

In a June 4 telecon with the press, NASA shared that due to recent issues, they have made the decision to operate HST in single gyro mode. This isn’t expected to have any impact on the quality of individual science images, however Hubble will need significantly more...

Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts

Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts

I have a delightfully weird tech story related to future lunar exploration. Research has shown that astronauts working on the moon are most likely to fall over when using tools, and once they fall over, getting up while wearing a space suit that restricts their motion...