Voyager 1 embarks on historic journey into interstellar space

September 13, 2013

NASA‘s Voyager 1 spacecraft is now officially the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars.

Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident.

“Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind’s historic leap into interstellar space,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

“The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we’ve all been asking — ‘Are we there yet?’ Yes, we are.”

Voyager 1 first detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets, in 2004.

Scientists then ramped up their search for evidence of the spacecraft’s interstellar arrival, knowing the data analysis and interpretation could take months or years.

NASA placed a kind of time capsule on Voyager 1 and 2-intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record — a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. (Credit: NASA JPL)

Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our sun. They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.


For a sound file of the oscillations detected by Voyager in interstellar space, animations and other information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/interstellarvoyager/.

For an image of the radio signal from Voyager 1 on Feb. 21 by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array, which links telescopes from Hawaii to St. Croix, visit: http://www.nrao.edu/.


Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/voyager-1-embarks-on-historic-journey-into-interstellar-space

MYO - Wearable Gesture Control from Thalmic Labs

Meteoro: Brasil não possui sistema de monitoramento de corpos celestes

Caso um meteoro de proporções semelhantes ao que atingiu Chelyabinsk e arredores, nos Montes Urais, na Rússia, na manhã desta sexta-feira (15), esteja a caminho do Brasil, só será possível saber por meio de agências espaciais internacionais ou quando ele se chocar com a atmosfera terrestre. Isso porque o país não possui um sistema de monitoramento de corpos celestes.


Apesar de ser possível observar frequentes contatos de meteoros com a superfície atmosférica no céu do país, o governo brasileiro não financia nenhum projeto nacional de monitoramento de meteoros, de acordo com o professor do departamento de Física, da Universidade Fedral do Espírito Santo (Ufes), Sérgio Bisch.


“Eu desconheço qualquer projeto no país. Em outros locais existem, por exemplo a própria NASA, nos EUA, que tem (o Monitoramento de Objetos Próximos à Terra), a Agência Espacial Europeia, a Rússia também possui. Porque é uma questão de segurança, é bom alertar para que haja mais investimento na área”, afirmou.


Vários meteoros colidem com a Terra todos os dias e várias toneladas desse material entram no planeta por causa de pequenas colisões, mas a grande maioria das partículas são pequenas, podendo acontecer de cair partículas maiores, como o que atingiu Chelyabinsk e arredores. Segundo o professor, qualquer região do planeta pode ser atingida por um meteoro. Não há um lugar que tenha maior ou menor incidência de queda de corpo celeste.

Continuar lendo: http://goo.gl/FYTHh

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" Espero que não haja consequências graves, no entanto, isso é uma prova de que não apenas a economia é vulnerável, mas todo o nosso planeta. "

- Dimitri Medvedev, primeiro-ministro russo

Fonte: Estudos em Geociências e DireitoLaw & Geosciences studies

ENVI and Pleiades - Why adopt JPEG 2000?

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Please register for the recorded webinar "ENVI and Pleiades - Why adopt JPEG 2000?" and learn all about the power of the Pleiades format and its support in the new ENVI 5 interface.

Discussed topics:
- Overview and attributes of the Pleiades format
- Performances and benefits of JPEG 2000
- Support, visualisation and processing in ENVI 5
- A rapid access to data with JPIP streaming

Presented by Astrium GeoInformation Services and Exelis Visual Information Solutions.

After watching, download your complimentary White Paper: "JPEG 2000: Overview and benefits for modern geospatial imagery applications".

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Recorded Webinar

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Mars rover Opportunity working at 'Matijevic Hill' site

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, well into its 9th year on Mars, will work for the next several weeks or months at a site with some of the mission's most intriguing geological features.

Rock fins up to about 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall dominate 
this scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration 
Rover Opportunity. 
The component images were taken during the 3,058th Martian day, 
or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars (Aug. 23, 2012). 
The view spans an area of terrain about 30 feet (9 meters) wide. 
Orbital investigation of the area has identified a possibility of clay minerals
in this area of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. 
The view combines exposures taken through Pancam filters centered on 
wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green)
and 432 nanometers (violet). 
It is presented in approximate true color, the camera team's best estimate
of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it 
with their own eyes. 
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The site, called "Matijevic Hill," overlooks 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater. Opportunity has begun investigating the site's concentration of small spherical objects reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed "blueberries" at the rover's landing site nearly 22 driving miles ago (35 kilometers).

The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure. Opportunity's science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed. The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.

Read more: http://goo.gl/7HmRM

Provided by JPL/NASA through the Phys.org

The Hubble´s eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) - NASA image release September25, 2012

Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the Universe, a photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe.

Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon.



Read and see more: http://goo.gl/t7fG2

Download the original size of this photo (Creative Commons license):
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8032/8024062104_b2a6602149_o.jpg

From NASA´s Video Gallery: Curiosity's Descent

This stop-motion video shows 297 frames from the Mars Descent Imager aboard NASA's Curiosity rover as it descended to the surface of Mars. These thumbnail images were received on Earth on Aug. 6, 2012, and cover the last two and a half minutes of descent.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Curiosity's mission site



See more: http://goo.gl/w0wX6