Countdown to the Moon day at the Air & Space Museum

Yesterday I spend the day manning a table at the National Air & Space Museum as a "Lunar Expert" to help them celebrate the 40th anniversary of the day that Apollo 11 launched. According to the little counter they gave me, over 800 people stopped by my booth to learn about "Moon dust". I had a bunch of images of soil grains from my own research, plus some lunar soil simulants and a handful of 3D analglyphs donated from a colleague at Lehigh (which were clearly the hit, man people really love those 3D images). I love doing these public outreach things, but I have to say I am always amazed by both the sophistication and the sheer ignorance of some of the questions I get asked.

A few of the things I was asked yesterday:

Is this real Moon dust? - referring to the two jars of soil simulants I brought (yeah, I'm sure NASA would have no problem with me leaving half a pound of lunar soil on an table in the middle of a museum full of people).

Was Night at the Museum II filmed here? - turns out it was, I didn't know that at the time though, and also, I'm not an information booth. There was also a question about the new Transformers movie, although I'm pretty sure that one was not filmed in the museum.

Is Moon dust radioactive? - I get this question from time to time and I don't understand where that comes from or why people would think that.

Have we figured out any good uses for Moon dust yet? - There were at least a dozen people who asked me some version of this question, because apparently there is no reason to go back to the Moon unless we can mine it for something. I tried to turn their question into a discussion of in situ resource utilization and explain how the soil contains all the elements we need to survive and make rocket fuel, so if we can figure out how to extract it we can "live off the land," I think that worked with about half the question askers, the others just seemed disappointed, apparently "oxygen" was not the answer they were looking for.

Did you collect these samples yourself? - I swear, I'm not making this up, there were two people, two, adults, at separate times, that genuinely thought I might have gone to the Moon myself and brought back my soil. One seamed really taken aback when I said that no one had been to the Moon in my lifetime, the other was like, "oh yeah, that's right". Wow, it's interactions like that that really scare the bejeezus out of me. How do these people function in normal life? It reminds me of a hairstylist I once had that thought the Sun and the Moon were the same thing, it just got dimmer at night (true story).

Not to worry though, for every left field question, there were plenty of bright and curious types of all ages with good questions. There was one guy who stayed for like half an hour just firing one question after the other, he was awesome, he kept apologizing to the gathering crowd for monopolizing me and they were like, no, we're learning so much from your questions, keep going. And the kid who was allergic to dust and wanted to know if he would be allergic to Moon dust too - that's a great question. (For the record, probably not, most terrestrial dust allergies are due to dust mites, which lunar soil doesn't have, but at least two people during Apollo one astronaut and one flight surgeon, experienced "hayfever-like" symptoms after being exposed to lunar dust.)

All in all, it was a good time. The museum was crowded, people mostly seemed interested and engaged. This was the first "Moon day" the museum has done, they normally do a "Mars day" but made an exception this year for the anniversary. I hope they don't wait until the next bit anniversary to do it again. I mean, Mars is cool and all, but come on, give the Moon some love too!

LCROSS impact might upset the aliens

According to this guy, the LCROSS mission which launched last week (That's it in the picture. I was there! It was awesome!) and will impact into the Lunar South Pole on October 9th of this year (mark your calendars), breaks international law, and may rile up the Moon's alien colonists.

I've got to tell you, the thing that bothers me most about this article is not the ridiculousness of the whole alien thing, it's that he talks about this supposed alien base being on the "dark" side of the Moon. People, the Moon doesn't have a "dark" side! It has a near side and a far side (or "backside" but I've been told that because "backside" had other connotations I should avoid using it). The far side has a two-week long night, followed by a two-week long day, just like the side we get to see.

Also, and I realize this is a minor point in the scope of his overall arguments, but the US never signed the Moon Treaty, and therefore, even if LCROSS did violate it (which it doesn't), it still wouldn't matter.

Apollo Moon Hoax Mythbusters tonight!

Don't forget to watch, or set the Tivo, for Mythbusters tonight and find out if we really did fake the Moonlandings!

Happy 50th Birthday NASA!

It was on this date, July 29th, 1959, that Eisenhower officially signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. Space.com has a good summary of the events that led up to that moment.

In honor of NASA's big day, I'd like to point out the new NASAimages.org site, a service of the internet archive, where you can easily search for just about any image NASA has ever taken. I've played with it a little, and I have to say the search engine is considerably better than other NASA image databases I've used. Try plugging in your favorite color, or your name (there were 86 hits on Sarah!), or your favorite moon, just to see what pops up.

Star Trek is what's killing the space program!?

According to Buzz Aldrin, the lack of interest among "young people" in the space program is due to "all the shows where they beam people around and things like that" because "they have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Wow, I'm thinking that would come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers (myself included) that cite Star Trek in particular and science fiction in general as one of the main things that got them interested in space.

Send your name to the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team would like to invite you to send your name to the Moon onboard the LRO spacecraft:

http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php

Unfortunately, it's just on the orbiter, so it looks like your name won't actually make it to the lunar surface (unless it crashes). They should totally put the names on the LCROSS part that is supposed to crash, that would be way cooler.

My name is already en route to the asteroid belt on board DAWN and it crashed into a comet on board Deep Impact, and I think I may be headed to Mercury on MESSENGER too, so I'm making some progress on spreading a little bit of me throughout the solar system.

13 year old smarter than NASA! Oh, and p.s. we're all going to die

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures

I love that the big headline here is that this kid can do math better than NASA, and not that there's a 1 in 450 chance that life as we know it will supposedly be wiped out by this asteroid.

Apparently the whole thing is a hoax anyway: Apophis risk not increased: science fair judges, world media screw up big time

But it's still really funny.

The Face on Mercury

As I was perusing the fabulous new pics from Mercury last week, I was thinking about how I heard somewhere long ago that it is hard-wired into our brains to pull out faces from random patterns when I came across this little guy, who, to my eyes is the spitting image of Gizmo (don't feed him after midnight!). (The original image is here)

If you haven't seen them yet, I highly recommend taking a peek at some of the fabulous pics returned by MESSENGER in its highly successful first flyby of Mercury, or visiting my friend Emily's blog at the planetary society where she has been doing a great job of pointing out some of the cool things to be seen (although not as cool as Gizmo, in my opinion).

This made me laugh today...

The 12 days of Christmas, NASA style (courtesy NASAwatch)

Dawn has launched!

Congrats to the Dawn team on a successful launch!

Space and Pop Culture

Interesting article in the NYTimes today on the ways that the space age has influenced Pop Culture

In fact the whole Science Times today is dedicated to "The Space Age" in celebration of the anniversary of Sputnik. Some good stuff in there, well worth a read.

Some budget relief for NASA?

Via NASAwatch...

Senators Hutchison, Landrieu, Mikulski and Shelby Pledge to Introduce NASA Funding Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill to provide $1 billion in additional funding for NASA when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22965

Serenity flys to station

So this blog tends to cover space and pop culture, usually two very different topics, but every once in a while, the two come together and it's beautiful.

Case in point, my friend Flygal pointed me to this site:
BREAKING ATMO - Here's How It Is...
which details the efforts from some of NASA's Browncoats to bring the joys of Firefly and Serenity to the astronauts aboard station.

How shiny is that?

I don't work in building 44

I'm fine, don't worry, I don't work in building 44.

So by now, pretty much everyone has heard about the events at JSC on Friday. I didn't know any of the people involved. Building 44 is clear on the other side of JSC from my office. I was in the lab all afternoon with no windows or internet access, I barely knew what was happening until it was over.

Man, JSC has been in the press for all the wrong reasons lately.

Some thoughts:

Does tragedy beget tragedy. I have to wonder if the gunman was emboldened by the VA Tech shootings? Though apparently he bought the gun a month ago, maybe he had it planned since then?

He went out to lunch with his boss/victim yesterday. Had he already decided then what he was going to do? What do you think they talked about? Do you think he was looking for a reason in that conversation - a reason to do it, or to not do it?

I had to go into the office this afternoon and I have to say I found things shockingly normal. I biked right past building 44. There was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary had happened, except the three news vans set up in Rocket Park. Which, by the way, is nothing compared to the Lisa Nowak deal, there were dozens of news vans all over town for that. What does that say about our society?

Yuri's Night - Space nerds come out to play

Keith Cowing of NASAwatch has a great opinion piece up about his impressions of Yuri's Night at Ames last week. Yuri's Night, for those who are unfamiliar, began several years ago as a small series of ad hoc parties to celebrate the first flight of a human in space - Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961. Over the past few years the event has quickly spread and has become a global phenomenon - with parties now sponsored all over the planet - including the Arctic and Antarctica. This party at Ames was probably the biggest to date, I've seen it described as a "rave with powerpoints" and compared to Burning Man, it must have been quite a shindig, which I had been there. There was a party here in Houston, but I missed that one too. I really like the idea of Yuri's Night, I hope that the phenomenon continues to spread and grow. It's a great opportunity to engage the public, and to remind NASA folks that space exploration is fun, not just work.

Live from LPSC, part 1 - the shoes

So, the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference is in full swing here. The science is pretty good overall. Lots of really cool new pictures from Mars. I also learned today that the Earth's water may not have come from meteorites and comets, but actually may have condensed onto dust grains in the very earliest days of solar system formation. Neat huh?

I love the planetary science community, but I have to say, fashion is not our forte. Today I started to notice the footwear of some of my compatriots, and it wasn't pretty. Some things I saw:

A guy (who gave a talk today) wearing nice khakis and a polo shirt (not quite a suit and tie, but not unreasonable), and on his feet - teva sandals and socks, navy socks with gold toes.

A guy in jeans and a polo with burgundy (not red, not purple, burgundy) Chuck Taylors with a kind of lacy or tapestry-ish pattern. That combination definitely takes guts, but it just wasn't quite working.

Several other guys in Birkenstocks and socks.

Many people were sporting what were clearly their "dress sneakers" or their "good hiking boots" - this is a common fashion trend in the geology world, and actually it can work just fine with jeans if you want to go casual, but tennis shoes and ties are not a great combination (not even with bolo ties made from your favorite meteorite).

I am noticing a lot more black tennis shoes with black dress pants, which, while still sad, is certainly an improvement over white tennis shoes with black pants.

Anousheh Ansari - Positive female astronaut role model

In the wake of the diaper-wearing crazed-astronaut love-triangle ruckus comes news that Anousheh Ansari is going to team up with Homer "October Sky" Hickum to write her memoirs.

You may or may not remember that back in September, Anousheh became the world’s first female space tourist as the fourth paying customer to hitch a ride to the space station. It was a pretty big deal at the time, I read a number of articles on her, she got a soundbite or two on the news, of course that coverage pales in comparison to the kind of overwhelming non-stop coverage that Lisa Nowak garnered last week. But I don't want to talk about Lisa (ever again, please), let's talk about a positive female astronaut/entrepreneur role model:

I was frankly surprised by the attention Ansari received at the time of her flight, after all female astronauts are a pretty common sight these days. Is a space tourist so different?

I remember well the first “space tourist” Dennis Tito. That was a big story, we had entered a new era and all that. I vaguely remember hearing about #2, Mark Shuttleworth, but I had nearly forgotten there was a 3rd tourist, Greg Olsen, he got almost no press. I guess the media had decided by #3 that it was old hat, that is until the Japanese Businessman that was supposed to be #4 bowed out for medical reasons and his backup, Ansari was given the green light. Suddenly space tourism was a big deal again, a woman was going, and I read one article after another detailing her adventures.

I did a quick Google search to try and find some historical perspective. It was only 2 years after Yuri Gargarin’s first spaceflight that Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. It is now more that 5 years since Dennis Tito’s historic ride as the first space tourist.

Of course the situations are far different. Tereshkova’s flight was a novelty act and nothing more (arguably, she was the first “space tourist”, as she was simply along for the ride and was never allowed to take manual control of the spacecraft). She was sent into space simply to check a box, first women in space – check, one more “first” for the Soviet space program. It wasn’t until Sally Ride’s first flight in 1983, a full twenty years after Gargarin, that women finally became a real part of the space program.

Ansari, on the other hand, is far from a novelty act. A life-long space devotee, she is a commercial space entrepreneur who, along with her husband and brother-in-law, has co-founded the Dallas-based company Prodea which is developing the Explorer line of air-launched suborbital vehicles. She and other members of her family donated a sizable chuck of the money for the Ansari X-Prize competition (hence the name) and she remains involved in the X-Prize Foundation, particularly its educational outreach.

The Iranian-born Ansari does see herself as a role model. In an interview with Space.com, she said, “In my work and everything that I have always done, I have tried to be an example. I hope to inspire everyone—especially young people, women, and young girls all over the world, and in Middle Eastern countries that do not provide women with the same opportunities as men—to not give up their dreams and to pursue them.”

In the U.S., little girls may not need Ansari as a role model, they have never lived in a world where women can’t be astronauts or fly in space. But in the Middle East, she will be a powerful symbol of hope for the next generation. For that, I’m grateful that the headline “first woman space tourist” made it around the world.

Will we ever get to a point where “first woman” isn’t a milestone to be recorded? I doubt it. I think we just really likes “firsts”. I wonder, what if the first person to stand on Mars is a woman, will history also made a point to record when the first man hit the ground? Yeah, I think so.