Tax Cut Deal Divides Potential 2012 GOP Contenders

Supreme Court to hear NASA privacy case
Related Articles Pasadena, Calif. (AP) For the past three years, Robert Nelson has been juggling two lives. He’s a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory by day, attempting to determine whether Saturn’s giant moon Titan is volcanically active. When he’s not exploring the cosmos, he’s leading a legal fight to prevent his Employer from asking Private details about his life. “It’s almost like having a second job,” Nelson said....

NASA lays off 1,100 workers
This weekend marks the first day of Unemployment for more than 1,100 workers at NASA, as the Space agency winds down its Shuttle program. The mass layoff is only the beginning, though. A local television station in Orlando is reporting that more than 9,000 NASA employees are set to lose their jobs as the Shuttle program reaches its end. "We are looking at 9,000 aerospace workers who will be affected with another 14,000 indirectly affected in community," Lisa Rice, president of Brevard Workforce...

Shuttle contractor laying off 333 in Houston area
NASA's primary Space Shuttle contractor will lay off 333 Houston-area workers on today as the program winds down. Houston-based United Space Alliance had previously announced the Cuts from its nearly 3,000 employees in the Houston region, primarily at sites on and near Johnson Space Center. "There is not one specific location or function that is being affected," said Kari Fluegel, a company spokeswoman. "It's spread across our operations and at all Job levels." The company supports the Space...

Passing Through Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 Dazzles October 20
Green comet 103P/Hartley 2 is approaching Earth for a close encounter on Oct. 20th. At that time, the comet will be only 11 million miles from Earth and should be dimly visible to the naked eye from dark sky sites. It already looks great through backyard telescopes: © Rolando Ligustri Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri took this picture on Oct. 1st using a 14-inch Global Rent-a-Scope in New Mexico. It shows Comet Hartley beside the spectacular Pacman Nebula (NGC 281), a star-forming cloud...

Watts Up With Nuuk?
As regular readers know, I have more photographs and charts of Weather stations on my computer than I have pictures of my family. A sad commentary to be sure, but necessary for what I do here. Steve Goddard points out this NASA GISS graph of the Annual Mean Temperature Data at Godthab Nuuk Lufthavn (Nuuk Airport) in Greenland. It has an odd discontinuity: Source Data is here The interesting thing about that end discontinuity is that is is an artifact of incomplete Data. In the link to...

Gigantic Jet Captured Near Kennedy Space Center
You know what comes out of the bottom of a thunder storm--lightning. But do you know what comes out of the top? On Sept. 28th at 7:01 am EDT, Joel Gonzalez photographed a gigantic jet shooting up from a storm near NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Click on the image to watch the action--and turn up the volume for a crackling soundtrack: Gigantic jets are lightning-like discharges that spring from the top of thunderstorms, reaching all the way from the thunderhead to the ionosphere 50+ miles...

First earthlike and possibly habitable exoplanet found nearby
Well, nearby is relative in interstellar space. The new planet, estimated by NASA researchers to be about three times as massive as the earth, orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581 every 36 days at a distance of about 13 million miles. The system is about 20 light-years away from earth. That's more than 100 Trillion miles! Even the fastest Spacecraft ever flown, Voyagers 1 and 2, would take hundreds of thousand of years to reach the planet, designated 581g . We won't be visiting up...

NASA Senate bill 3729 unofficially passes US House
Update: And it's now official. After follower and driving this Bill for months, which at times felt like herding a flock of kittens hopped up on Mountain Dew, Senate Bill 3729, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, has passed the House YEA 304; NAY 118. The House just informally passed NASA re-authorization Bill reported out of Senate, S3729, by open outcry. If signed into law NASA is now secure in funding for next three years. Via the Houston Chronicle : The Bill, approved by the Senate in...

Up in flames
Theres been no shortage of hand-wringing and threats of dire consequences about the millions of acres of beetle-killed pines in Montanas forests. Weve all been inundated with fear from fire experts who use computer models to predict massive, out-of-control conflagrations. But now, thanks to photos from space and some good old hard science, it looks like those fears have been vastly overblown. The National Atomospheric and Space Agency (NASA) presented its findings recently in a Press Release...

NASA Chief Who Called Muslim Outreach 'Foremost' Job Heads to Saudi Arabia
The NASA chief who caused an uproar over the summer when he said outreach to the Muslim World might be his foremost priority has embarked on a trip this weekend to Saudi Arabia. 

Watching lightning jets hit the ionosphere
From Spaceweather.com : You know what comes out of the bottom of a thunder storm-lightning. But do you know what comes out of the top? On Sept. 28th at 7:01 am EDT, Joel Gonzalez photographed a gigantic jet shooting up from a storm near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Click on the image to watch the action-and turn up the volume for a crackling soundtrack: Gigantic jets are lightning-like discharges that spring from the top of thunderstorms, reaching all the way from the...

Sun's Heliopause: A Moving Target
© NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Artist concept of the IBEX satellite. Isn't it counter-intuitive to name a Spacecraft the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, knowing full well that it'll never venture more than about 200,000 miles (300,000 km) from its home planet? That thought crossed my mind a couple of years ago, when NASA launched IBEX into a looping orbit that stretches halfway to The Moon but no farther. But within a year the Spacecraft had amazed its science team. Its first...

Mysterious Ribbon at Edge of Solar System is Changing
A year ago, researchers from the IBEX mission - NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer - announced the discovery of an unexpected bright band or ribbon of surprisingly high energy emissions at the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. Now, after a year of observations, scientists have seen vast changes, including an unusual knot in the ribbon which appears to have 'untied.' Changes in the ribbon - a 'disturbance in the force,' so to speak, along with a shrunken...

Scientists Discover 1st Earth-Like Planet
Astronomer Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz calls it a ‘Goldilocks’ planet. Neither too hot nor too cold, orbiting a dwarf red star Gliese 581 in a ‘habitable zone’. During a briefing yesterday in Washington DC, Vogt and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institute announced a first in astronomy, the discovery of an Earth-like planet in deep space. Known as Gliese 581g, the newly found world is about 20 light years away and about three times the size of Earth. Before you pack...

Many layoffs follow NASA bill's passage > Bay Area Citizen > News Archives >
10.01.10 Despite the fact Congress finally passed the three-year $58 Billion NASA Authorization Act late Wednesday night, hundreds of Space workers found themselves without jobs Friday. Some could be blamed on the uncertainty that has hung over the Space program for the past nine months, but most were because of the Space Shuttles pending Retirement. United Space Alliance Laid Off 333 employees who worked here in the Johnson Space Center Area Friday, as planned, and Bay Area Houston Economic...

Among The Stars Of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 Approaches Earth
© NASA/MSFC/Bill Cooke, NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office A pale green interloper among the stars of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 shines in this four-minute exposure taken on the night of Sept. 28, 2010, by NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. Still too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, the comet was 18 million miles away from Earth at the time. Cooke took this image using a telescope located near Mayhill, N.M., which he controlled via the Internet from his home computer in Huntsville,...

Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards
NASA Shifts Course Toward NEAs NASA's future course for human Space Exploration has been subject to extensive debate ever since the Augustine Commission recommended a "flexible path" with "multiple destinations." The new approach was implemented in the President's proposed NASA Budget for FY11, which would (if approved by Congress) substitute a NEA for The Moon as the next target for human Exploration. Read

NASA's Hansen: Would recent extreme "events have occurred if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm?" The "appropriate answer" is "almost certainly not." - "It is likely that 2012 will reach a record high glob
Our top climatologist has a must-read, chart-filled analysis, “ How Warm Was This Summer? ” The two most fascinating parts are Hansen’s discussion of how scientists should answer questions about the recent record-smashing Extreme Weather events Hansen’s analysis of what is coming in the next couple of years. Let’s start with the Extremes: Finally, a comment on frequently asked questions of the sort: Was Global Warming the cause of the 2010 Heat Wave in Moscow,...

Knot in the ribbon at the edge of the solar system "unties"
The IBEX science team compares the first and second maps to reveal whether there are time variations in the ribbon or the more distributed emissions around the ribbon. This animation fades between the first and second IBEX maps. We see that the first and second maps are relatively similar; however, there are significant time variations as well. These time variations are forcing scientists to try to understand how the heliosphere can be changing so rapidly.Credit: IBEX Science Team/Goddard Space...

Sins of the Kim Clan
A few years ago, NASA put together a wonderful composite portrait of planet Earth: a map of the world at night as viewed from space. In that mosaic, clusters of light stand out against the darkness in those places where human-beings have gathered to live and work in significant numbers. In Asia, one particular exception to this rule stands out. Only a few feeble rays of light escape that portion of Asia between the 38 th parallel and the Yalu River. Symbolically, the Democratic Peoples...

NASA authorization success
Wednesday 9/29/10 - S.3729 has just passed the House under Suspension of the Rules. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has worked so hard in recent months to support this ongoing effort to reform NASA. We'll have more to say about the next round of this struggle as we learn more, but listening to the speeches on the House floor this evening made one thing unmistakably clear: These large differences over the future of NASA will continue to be contested in the Congress, with the FY 2011 NASA...

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) " Status of the Survey Program and Review of NASA's Report to Congress
Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives :: Hearing :: Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) Status of the Survey Program and Review of NASAs Report to Congress Sorry, this page needs JavaScript to fully utilize all site features. Skip banner and navigation and go to content

NASA's Job Is Not Muslim Outreach, Or Is It?
Paging Robert Gibbs The NASA chief who caused an uproar over the summer when he said outreach to the Muslim World might be his "foremost" priority has embarked on a trip this weekend to Saudi Arabia. A NASA spokesman said the visit is part of a multicountry tour[...] The Orlando Sentinel reported that "top" NASA officials had urged Bolden not to make the trip, but NASA had no comment when asked about the claim. Obi One has some splainin to do, again . Related (well not, just a FYI): Non...

New Apollo 11 footage
...is a weblog about the Liberal Arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 ( archives ). You can read about me and Kottke.org here . If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along . New Apollo 11 footage Due to The Moon's relative position in the sky as Neil Armstrong started his moonwalk, Australia was able to capture the first few minutes of his descent down the ladder before NASA was able to find a signal. But it was lost until recently; the restored...

IBEX Finds Surprising Changes at Solar Boundary
When NASA launched the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) on October 19, 2008, space physicists held their collective breath for never-before-seen views of a collision zone far beyond the planets, roughly 10 Billion miles away. Thats where the solar wind, an outward rush of charged particles and magnetic fields continuously spewed by the Sun, runs into the flow of particles and fields that permeates interstellar space in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy. No Spacecraft had ever...