Exploración espacial (Continuación)

Por qué ir a Plutón

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

¿Por qué escalar el Everest? Ésta es la pregunta que realizaban reiteradamente al montañero británico George Mallory, quien formó parte de tres expediciones que intentaron ascender a esa gran cumbre en los años 20. Gran parte del público no comprendía el objetivo de correr riesgos y de emplear costosos medios para alcanzar esa meta. De manera análoga, ahora que la sonda de NASA New Horizons nos envía imágenes inéditas del pequeño y remoto Plutón, ocupando así las páginas de la prensa, oímos la pregunta de cuál es la finalidad de tan difícil misión. Recordemos que con ésta, el ser humano ya ha enviado sondas a todos los cuerpos importantes del sistema solar y que, en este momento, tenemos varias naves espaciales y robots estudiando Marte tanto desde órbita como sobre la superficie del planeta rojo.…  Seguir leyendo »

This handout image released on February 5, 2015 by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare occurrence as three of Jupiters largest moons parade across the giant gas planets banded face. (Ho/AFP/Getty Images)

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Thanks to the New Horizons probe, which began its exploration of Pluto last month, scientists and the public can anticipate ever more exciting pictures and data about the dwarf planet. It will be the first encounter with a member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. Yet the scheduled July 14 flyby will be of not one object but at least six: Pluto, Charon (a satellite half the size of Pluto) and four small moons — and who knows what else in orbit around their common center. Many wonders and insights about the origins and evolution of the solar system await.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Everywhere you look, there is renewed interest in space. Two of the top grossing movies of the past two years were "Gravity" and "Interstellar," while recent real-life space dramas have been even more fascinating than fiction.

Take the unprecedented 37-year, 12-billion-mile odyssey of NASA's Voyager spacecraft -- the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. In 2012, our Curiosity rover made its harrowing landing on Mars. We also provided key support and instruments to the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft and the recent first-ever robotic landing on a comet with its Philae lander.

Everywhere I go, the world over, students, citizens, scientists, explorers and entrepreneurs are eager to get in on the action in this new era of space exploration.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

It has been an eventful few weeks for space news.

First came the launch failure of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket and cargo spacecraft bound for the International Space Station, which started a conversation in the media about the wisdom of relying on commercial carriers for transporting cargo (and later, crew) to the space station.

Days later came the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a flight test. The media discussion expanded to include the question of whether it would be ethical to launch members of the general public to space in the future, as nonprofessionals seeking the experience.

Regardless of the misconceptions (NASA has always relied upon commercial companies to design and manufacture its spacecraft and rockets) and arguments either way, the fact is that the public suddenly became aware that we are doing a lot of things in space.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Noviembre de 2014 podría ser recordado como la época en que la humanidad aterrizó por primera vez una sonda robótica en el núcleo de un cometa.

Oportunamente, la misión que logró esta destacada hazaña se llama Rosetta. En 1799, los soldados franceses descubrieron una antigua tableta egipcia, pintada en el 196 a.C. con escritura en tres idiomas diferentes. A final de cuentas, esta escritura en la Piedra Rosetta, junto con la escritura en un obelisco en la isla de Philae del río Nilo, ayudó al entendimiento de los jeroglíficos egipcios. Esta escritura relataba un Egipto mucho más antiguo.

Similarmente, los creadores de la era moderna de la misión Rosetta esperan que su exploración ayude a entender los cometas; núcleos antiguos de roca y hielo que son clave para entender la formación de nuestro sistema solar.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia,

Le succès de Rosetta offre à la cinquantenaire Agence spatiale européenne (ESA) un somptueux cadeau d’anniversaire. Il vient couronner un plan à long terme engagé à l’ESA au début des années 1980. L’Europe était alors fortement dépendante de la NASA (et un peu de l’URSS) pour engager des programmes ambitieux d’exploration et les mettre en orbite. En 1981, la décision unilatérale de la NASA d’arrêter sa participation à la mission ISPM de survol des pôles du Soleil par un satellite américain et un européen provoqua une crise politique majeure et vint renforcer une croissante volonté d’autonomie renforcée par le succès du premier lancement d’Ariane en 1979.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia,

It seems people only pay attention anymore when the rocket blows up.

Just seconds into its launch Tuesday evening, the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket, carrying supplies to the International Space Station, suffered an explosion in the aft end of its first stage, fell back onto the launch pad and blew up in a spectacular fireball.

Within minutes, the major news organizations had picked up the story and began running live interviews of eyewitnesses and experts. We learned of the experiments that were being transported to the ISS, including several student/school science projects.

Had all gone as planned, the news of the launch would have earned scant mention, and certainly very few in the general public would have known anything about what was on board.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

After burning through severance checks from his layoff by AOL, he went back to work as a programmer in Silicon Valley.

Ten years later, in 2009, Weir decided to try writing again, but just as a hobby. Keeping his day job at a mobile phone software company, he started posting a new book on a personal website, chapter by chapter as he wrote it. This time, there were no aliens and no imaginary planet.

Instead he crafted a story, set a few decades in the future, about an astronaut who mistakenly gets left for dead on Mars when the other members of his crew are forced to make a quick escape from the effects of a devastating sandstorm.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Me inscribí como voluntaria para un viaje sin retorno a Marta. Sí, sin retorno.

Mars One, una organización holandesa sin ánimo de lucro, quiere crear el primer asentamiento humano en Marte en las próximas décadas. Yo soy una de las 1.058 personas elegidas de distintas partes del mundo en la segunda fase de selección. En las próximas rondas se reducirán hasta seleccionar a 24 candidatos que se entrenarán durante 10 años para la misión.

Es un proceso muy competitivo. En mi solicitud, destaqué mis fortalezas, como mi capacidad de adaptación, resistencia, curiosidad y dotes de liderazgo. Estoy lista para enfrentar los desafíos de ir al espacio y vivir en Marte.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

La noticia de que la sonda marciana Mangalyaan, lanzada por India el 5 de noviembre ya ha salido de la órbita de la Tierra y dejado atrás la Luna en camino a su destino final, a 400 mil millones de kilómetros, causó un alborozo temprano en los indios este fin de año. Las misiones espaciales se han convertido en motivo de orgullo para la India, que es ya uno de los principales países del mundo en materia de tecnología satelital y aeroespacial.

El Mangalyaan es el primer satélite interplanetario indio y se construyó enteramente en el país para la misión a Marte.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

As scientists from around the world gathered in San Francisco for the American Geophysical Union meeting, the success stories are pouring in. On Monday, the Mars Curiosity mission team released a new study showing that the former lake bed in which the Rover landed could once have supported microbial life. The Cassini mission to Saturn released a spectacular video of mysterious hexagonal clouds whirling over the planet's pole.

But the question on everyone's mind is: Will these missions be allowed to continue? The answer may well be: No.

Next year's NASA budget is poised to force premature cancellation of either Curiosity or Cassini -- the agency's flagship missions.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

If you want to marry in India and are looking for a bride or groom, normally you need to consult an astrologer, to learn whether the position of the planet Mars is favorable on your birth chart. If not, you may find it difficult to get the match of your choice. Lately, some employers have been trying this as well, matching their horoscopes with those of their prospective employees; companies are also comparing horoscopes with their clients for good fortune.

The influence of Mars and the other planets on the life of an average Indian cannot be forgotten, especially this month.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

When I view the Moon, there are times when I feel like I’m on a time machine. I am back to a cherished point in the past — now nearly 45 years ago — when Neil Armstrong and I stood on that bleak, but magnificent lunar landscape called the Sea of Tranquility.

While we were farther away from Earth than humans had ever been, the fact is that we weren’t alone. An estimated 600 million people back on Earth, at that time the largest television audience in history, watched us plant our footprints on the Moon.

Fast forward to today. Now I see the Moon in a far different light — not as a destination but more a point of departure, one that places humankind on a trajectory to homestead Mars and become a two-planet species.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Curiosity es un recién llegado en Marte. El robot rodante, o rover, del tamaño de un coche mediano y alimentado por un generador de radioisótopos, ha recorrido ya cerca de un kilómetro en el interior del cráter Gale desde su llegada en agosto de 2012. Las noticias sobre sus investigaciones y descubrimientos son constantes. Esta popularidad explica que sea conocido que Curiosity se encuentra en un lugar que hubiera podido ser habitable en el pasado, cuando Gale contenía grandes cantidades de agua, y que el rover ha sufrido algunos fallos de memoria en sus computadoras que han retrasado ligeramente los planes de investigación originales.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

I will always wonder what it was like to huddle around a shortwave radio and through the crackling static from space hear the faint beeps of the world's first satellite -- Sputnik. I also missed watching Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon and the first space shuttle take off for the stars. Those events were way before my time.

As a kid, I was fascinated with what goes on in the sky, and when NASA pulled the plug on the shuttle program I was heartbroken. Yet the privatized space race has renewed my childhood dreams to reach for the stars.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Nasa's Curiosity, the rover now on Mars, may find evidence for creatures that lived early in Martian history; firm evidence for even the most primitive bugs would have huge import. There could be life in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. But what really fuels popular imagination is the prospect of advanced life – the "aliens" familiar from science fiction – and nobody expects a complex biosphere in those locations.

Suppose, however, we widen our gaze beyond our solar system. Astronomers have learnt that other stars have planets circling round them. Nasa's Kepler spacecraft monitors about 150,000 stars, measuring their brightness sensitively enough to detect the very slight dimming (about one part in 10,000) that occurs when an Earth-like planet transits a sun-like star.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Most technological advances are actually just improvements. One thing builds on the next: from shoddy to serviceable, from helpful to amazing. First you had a carriage, then a car, and then an airplane; now you have a jet. You improve on what is there. Technological advances are like that.

Except for the one that involved landing on the Moon. When a human went and stood on the Moon and looked back at the Earth, that was a different kind of breakthrough. Nothing tangible changed when Neil Armstrong’s foot dug into the lunar dust and his eyes turned back at us. We didn’t get faster wheels or smaller machines or more effective medicine.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

El Cielo y la Luna, como el Sol, siempre han conformado ricos imaginarios de culto y admiración en todas las civilizaciones. Su influencia en aspectos esenciales de la existencia como el devenir agrario o la resignada aceptación del poder en plaza han marcado la evolución de una relación que, ciertamente, se ha transmutado con el paso del tiempo, pero sin perder por ello el enorme hechizo que emana de un desafiante enigma cuya perduración llega hasta nuestros días. En la China de las dinastías, la fusión de ambos elementos tomó cuerpo, por ejemplo, en las ceremonias del Emperador, considerado el Hijo del Cielo, para implorar buenas cosechas, ofrendas que tenían en el Templo del Cielo una expresión inequívoca y sublime del esplendor y atractivo de la divinidad.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

What was, in retrospect, most heroic about Neil Alden Armstrong, who died Saturdayat age 82, was the manner in which he shied away from the spoils and trappings of heroism itself.

Being the first man on the moon, after all, would seem to place you on top of the world, providing a kind of lifetime pass to wherever you wanted to go -- and whatever you wanted to be.

Thinking of running for office? Name the district, state or country and it's yours.

Maybe you'd like to go into business. The line of people with dotted lines to sign stretches from here to infinity.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

After the NASA rover Curiosity made its flawless landing on the Red Planet last weekend, scientists cheered and raised their hands in delirious triumph. It was a spontaneous reaction of the sort we have witnessed dozens of times at Olympic venues, and appropriately so — America had won the science gold, again.

The complexity of the rover’s landing was a quantum technological leap beyond anything NASA has attempted in planetary exploration. After traveling 354 million miles, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity had to slow in just minutes from about 12,000 mph. It arrived at the thin Martian atmosphere with parachutes deployed, rockets firing and skycrane unwinding.…  Seguir leyendo »