This blog has become a sort of personal-cum-public diary. As for its contents, some are meant for me and my friends and relatives; others are for the public. This blog will have only positive, ennobling, elevating, encouraging and uplifting thoughts/ideas/materials. Whoever visits should feel happy and should be able to pick up some good ideas/thoughts/links. In short, "NOTHING NEGATIVE" is my motto.(Grateful thanks to Jon Sullivan and Public-Domain-Photos.com for the background photo)
Happy New Year 2021
WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY, HEALTHY,
PROSPEROUS AND PURPOSEFUL
NEW YEAR 2020
Inside a
locked vault at Johnson Space Center is treasure few have seen and fewer have
touched.
The
restricted lab is home to hundreds of pounds of moon rocks collected by Apollo
astronauts close to a half-century ago. And for the first time in decades, NASA
is about to open some of the pristine samples and let geologists take a crack
at them with 21st-century technology.
What better
way to mark this summer’s 50th anniversary of humanity’s first footsteps on the
moon than by sharing a bit of the lunar loot.
“It’s sort
of a coincidence that we’re opening them in the year of the anniversary,”
explained NASA’s Apollo sample curator Ryan Zeigler, covered head to toe in a
white protective suit with matching fabric boots, gloves and hat.
“But
certainly the anniversary increased the awareness and the fact that we’re going
back to the moon.”
With the
golden anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s feat fast approaching —
their lunar module Eagle landed July 20, 1969, on the Sea of Tranquility — the
moon is red-hot again.
After
decades of flip-flopping between the moon and Mars as the next big astronaut
destination, NASA aims to put astronauts on the lunar surface again by 2024 at
the White House’s direction. President Donald Trump prefers talking up Mars.
But the consensus is that the moon is a crucial proving ground given its
relative proximity to home — 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers) or two to three
days away.
Zeigler’s
job is to preserve what the 12 moonwalkers brought back from 1969 through 1972
— lunar samples totaling 842 pounds (382 kilograms) — and ensure scientists get
the best possible samples for study.
Some of the
soil and bits of rock were vacuum-packed on the moon — and never exposed to
Earth’s atmosphere — or frozen or stored in gaseous helium following splashdown
and then left untouched. The lab’s staff is now trying to figure out how best
to remove the samples from their tubes and other containers without
contaminating or spoiling anything. They’re practicing with mock-up equipment
and pretend lunar dirt.
Compared
with Apollo-era tech, today’s science instruments are much more sensitive,
Zeigler noted.
“We can do
more with a milligram than we could do with a gram back then. So it was really
good planning on their part to wait,” he said.
The lunar
sample lab has two side-by-side vaults: one for rocks still in
straight-from-the-moon condition and a smaller vault for samples previously
loaned out for study. About 70 percent of the original haul is in the pristine
sample vault, which has two combinations and takes two people to unlock. About
15 percent is in safekeeping at White Sands in New Mexico. The rest is used for
research or display.
Of the six
manned moon landings, Apollo 11 yielded the fewest lunar samples: 48 pounds or
22 kilograms. It was the first landing by astronauts and NASA wanted to
minimize their on-the-moon time and risk. What’s left from this mission — about
three-quarters after scientific study, public displays and goodwill gifts to
all countries and U.S. states in 1969 — is kept mostly here at room
temperature.
Grateful
thanks to BLOOMBERG QUICKTAKE: NOW and YouTube and all the others who made this
video possible
The only
spacecraft that has landed astronauts on the moon. In this video we focus on
the Saturn V rocket which launched the Apollo Spacecraft into orbit.
Here's the
link to part 2: https://youtu.be/tl1KPjxKVqk
If, one year
ago, you’d been asked how quick it would be to transition to a situation where
almost everyone at your organizations was working remotely from home, every day
– what would you have said?
Grateful
thanks to BERNARD MARR and YouTube and all those who made this video possible
The great
battle of Messines/Passchendaele is explored in this documentary, combining
unique archive footage with carefully researched location photography,
transporting the viewer back to the exact spot where so many momentous events
occurred.
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made this video possible
The decade
of propaganda, impassioned speeches, newspaper articles, posters and
campaigning that led to one moment, Hitler being made Chancellor of Germany in
1933.
Timeline
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Grateful
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made this video possible
GOOGLE'S
PARENT COMPANY ALPHABET HAS DEVELOPED A ROBOTIC PLANT BUGGY. It can roll
through the fields and scan crops.
It collects
data and high-quality images of each plant. The robotics, sensing and software
tools collect and interpret diverse data from the field. The team combines
these images with other data sets like satellite imagery, weather data, and
soil information. This helps growers to get a clear picture of the happenings
in the field.
Read more
here: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/tec...
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for watching our video!
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These are called Iridescent Clouds- known as "fire rainbows" or "rainbow clouds". This is a diffraction phenomenon caused by small water droplets or ice crystals individually scattering light.
