There are certain moments in history that define what it is to be a geek.
For the fine men and women at NASA, receiving a SGI computer with 1,024 dual core Intel Itanium 2 processors and 4 terabytes of RAM must the penultimate moment of their lives.
According to NASA, the supercomputer will generate 13.1 teraflops of calculating power and will run a single copy of Linux, making it the largest Linux single system image in the world.
NASA also mentions that they have acquired an ultra-dense 240TB SGI InfiniteStorage 10000 system to handle all their data storage needs.
According to NASA’s Dr. Piyush Mehrotra:
“Supercomputers play a critical role in many NASA missions, including new space vehicle design, global climate studies and astrophysics research. We look forward to evaluating SGI’s latest HPC offerings as part of our long-term technology refresh effort.”
Although it’s probably foolish to disagree with a rocket scientist, and space exploration is important, if I were Dr. Mehrotra, I’d get this thing running Crysis posthaste!
It looks like NASA is up to its old antics again, this time promising the ability to detect planets from faraway stars. These extrasolar distant planets, sometimes known as exoplanets, have typically been identified erroneously by madmen scientists until 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz realized accurate planet designation was popular.
Trying to image an exoplanet - a planet orbiting a star other than the sun - is a daunting task, because its relatively dim glow is easily overpowered by the intense glare of its much bigger, brighter parent star. The challenge has been compared to looking for a firefly next to a searchlight.
This is true, since Firefly is really hard to find today (did this show get canceled or something? It was so good).
Using an instrument called a coronagraph to mask the central star’s glare and a mirror to gather light for the telescope, scientists could “image a distant planet 10 billion times fainter than its central star.” The device, named the High Contrast Imaging Testbed, uses mathematical angle reflection magic to block out the bright shine of the main star that the planets in question orbit.
The picture above is an image from one of NASA’s simulated demonstrations, and showcases just what makes this technology so special. The main concept is as follows:
Three simulated planets — one as bright as Jupiter, one half as bright as Jupiter and one as faint as Earth — stand out plainly in this image created from a sequence of 480 images captured by the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL. A roll-subtraction technique, borrowed from space astronomy, was used to distinguish planets from background light. The asterisk marks the location of the system’s simulated star.
The actual potential of this telescope is very high, since most exoplanets that have already been found either feature extreme temperatures or are giant gas balls that are uninhabitable. With every improvement in distant imaging technology, humans get one step closer to discovering stable, Earth-like planets, which ultimately leads to the discovery of alien lifeforms.
The NASA Shuttle Atlantis, otherwise known as the Space Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis OV-104 (OV stands for Orbital Vehicle), is the fourth operational shuttle built by the U.S. space program [Wiki]. The shuttle has been utilized in several missions, from performing military projects during its first flight in 1985, to deploying probes Magellan and Galileo and making seven flights to the Russian space station Mir. The shuttle has also taken a four-year temporary retirement before going back into use in 2006.
The Atlantis shuttle has gone through a lot throughout its service to U.S. astronauts and has even been used in media features such as:
* In the film Deep Impact the crew used the Space Shuttle Atlantis to get to the mission craft, Messiah.
* In the game The Dig, an unnamed shuttle participates in the mission of firing the asteroid. However in the game demo, the name “Atlantis” is mentioned.
* In the film Armageddon, the Space Shuttle Atlantis is destroyed in orbit at the beginning of the film by a meteor shower.
* In the episode of the animated show Recess which was called “Space Cadet,” the class watches a space shuttle launch. The vehicle is Atlantis.
* In the movie SpaceCamp, the space shuttle Atlantis is featured. The children were onboard the shuttle during an engine test when one of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters was ignited.
* In the free space simulator Orbiter created by Martin Schweiger, Atlantis is the default space shuttle you can pilot.
* In the PlayStation game “Treasures of the Deep,” the player goes on a mission to destroy the shuttle’s remains after it sinks in the Mariana Trench.
* In the Tom Clancy novel Red Storm Rising Atlantis was pulled off the launch pad just before a scheduled mission to allow the military to switch out her original payload with additional reconnaissance satellites just before the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union.
* In a Bill Nye the Science Guy Episode “Space Exploration,” Atlantis as well as Columbia make an appearance.
The Atlantis is, without a doubt, one of my favorite space vehicles (after the Millennium Falcon and the Gunstar ships from The Last Starfighter), and I was troubled when its fuel tank was damaged by a dastardly hail storm on February 26th 2007. Since the shuttle is planned to be retired in 2008 in shuttle mission ST-125, I wasn’t sure if the Atlantis would make its scheduled launch dates for ST-117, which should have occurred in March but got delayed due to the hail storm damage.
But on April 10, NASA stated that it is “targeting June 8 as the next possible launch opportunity for space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-117 mission to the International Space Station”, and went on to say that “the damage required engineers to repair approximately 2,660 sites on the tank.” That hail can sure be a pain in the American Science and Surplus, since it cost NASA so much money.
(It seems so fitting) Hail Atlantis! If you have never heard the song ‘Atlantis’, I urge you to watch this video, lest you be forever in the dark about its pleasing aural beauty:
