Gizmorama
April 13, 2011
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Good Morning,
As certain spacecrafts operated by NASA go into retirement,
the question of where they will be housed for display becomes
prevalent. Check out the last article for details on where
these symbolic?now?monuments can be found.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
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Nanoparticles seen as damaging to soil
KINGSTON, Ontario - Canadian researchers say nanoparticles,
becoming more and more common in consumer products, may
cause irreparable damage to soil systems and the environment.
"Millions of tons of nanoparticles are now manufactured every
year, including silver nanoparticles, which are popular as
antibacterial agents," Virginia Walker, a professor in the
department of biology in Queen's University in Ontario, said.
"We started to wonder what the impact of all these nano-
particles might be on the environment, particularly on
soil." The team acquired a sample of soil from a remote
arctic site, believing this soil stood the greatest chance
of being uncontaminated by any nanoparticles, which are now
present in everything from socks to salad dressing and suntan
lotion, a university release said. "We hadn't thought we
would see much of an impact, but instead our results indicate
that silver nanoparticles can be classified as highly toxic
to microbial communities," Walker said. "This is particularly
concerning when you consider the vulnerability of the arctic
ecosystem." The researchers first examined the indigenous
microbe communities living in the uncontaminated soil samples
before adding three different kinds of nanoparticles, inclu-
ding silver. After six months, a beneficial microbe essential
to plant nutrition had all but disappeared, showing these
important nitrogen-fixing species were highly susceptible to
the toxic effects of silver nanoparticles.
NASA prepares Jupiter mission
TITUSVILLE, Fla. - NASA says its unmanned Juno spacecraft is
in Florida for final preparations ahead of its launch on a
mission to study Jupiter. The solar-powered spacecraft, which
will orbit Jupiter to collect data on the planet's origins,
structure and atmosphere, arrived in Florida last week from
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, a release from
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said.
Juno was removed from its packing container Saturday at an
ultra-clean climate-controlled room at the Astrotech payload
processing facility in Titusville, Fla., Saturday to begin
functional testing. "It looks exactly the same as we left
it," Tim Gasparrini, Lockheed Martin's Juno program manager,
told Spaceflightnow.com. "That's a great feeling." NASA says
it is aiming for an Aug. 5-26 launch window for the mission
that has been eight years in planning. "The Juno spacecraft
and the team have come a long way since this project was
first conceived in 2003," Scott Bolton, Juno's principal
investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San
Antonio, said. "We're only a few months away from a mission
of discovery that could very well rewrite the books on not
only how Jupiter was born, but how our solar system came
into being."
Warming effect on main food hits penquins
WASHINGTON - A climate change related-decline in Antarctic
penguin numbers is due more to loss of their primary food
source than to habitat change, researchers say. Two penguin
species in the study, published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, rely on small shrimp-like
creatures known as krill for their survival. Previous assess-
ments suggest the abundance of krill has declined as much as
80 percent since the 1970s. The decline in numbers has hit
both species of penguins despite their preference for dif-
ferent habitats, researchers said. A 30-year field study of
Adelie penguins, which live on sea ice, and chinstrap peng-
uins, which avoid ice, shows populations of both species in
the West Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea have declined
for at least the last 10 years, with some colonies decreasing
by more than 50 percent. "For penguins and other species,
krill is the linchpin in the food web. Regardless of their
environmental preferences, we see a connection between cli-
mate change and penguin populations through the loss of hab-
itat for their main food source," said Dr. Wayne Trivelpiece
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
Antarctic Ecosystem Research Division. "As warming continues,
the loss of krill will have a profound effect throughout the
Antarctic ecosystem. "Penguins are excellent indicators of
changes to the biological and environmental health of the
broader ecosystem because they are easily accessible while
breeding on land, yet they depend entirely on food resources
from the sea," Trivelpiece said.
NASA announces shuttle display homes
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA has announced its choice of re-
tirement sites for its shuttles, with Florida, New York and
California coming out ahead in the contest to display the
craft. At a ceremony at the Kennedy space center in Florida,
NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., made the long-
awaited announcement of where shuttles Discovery, Endeavor
and Atlantis would end up, a NASA release said Tuesday.
Discovery, which made its final flight last month, will go
to the Smithsonian for display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy
Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. Once
it has Discover, the museum will no long need Enterprise,
on display since 2004, and will send it to the Intrepid
Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan. Enterprise was
used for early glide tests but was never sent into orbit.
The Endeavour, presently on its Florida launching pad
awaiting its final mission, will go to the California Sci-
ence Center in Los Angeles. The Atlantis, scheduled for
its last launch in June, will go to the Kennedy Space Center
visitor complex. Twenty-one institutions across the country
had put in bids for one of the orbiters, The New York Times
reported. Tuesday's announcement to came on the anniversaries
of two historic moments in space flight: the 50th anniversary
of the flight of Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut who was
the first human in space, and the 30th anniversary of the
first launching of a space shuttle, the Columbia, in 1981,
the Times said.
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