:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 12.15.2003 ::
:: In other news... ::
From The Houston Chronicle:
New probes poised to take on Mars jinx
WASHINGTON -- They've sailed through searing solar flares and survived unexpected mechanical ticks. Now as an international fleet of robotic explorers closes on the Red Planet, the big question isn't what they'll find, but whether they'll land.
Delivering a spacecraft safely to Earth's nearest planetary neighbor is an engineering nightmare: Two-thirds of the 34 probes dispatched to Mars since 1960 have gone belly up.
"Some, including myself, call it the `death planet,' " declares Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.
Last week, the death planet claimed its latest victim: Japanese officials announced that Mars-bound Nozomi, launched in 1998 and due to arrive this week, was crippled beyond repair.
The spacecraft, whose name means "hope," was supposed to study the Martian atmosphere and moons, but it blew a thruster en route.
Next up: the spunky, British-built Beagle 2, a 73-pound machine designed to conduct the first sweep for Martian life in three decades.
On Friday, the robot will peel away from its companion, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, in preparation for a Christmas Eve arrival. Mars Express, meanwhile, will swing into orbit to begin a two-year mission to map the planet surface.
Trailing Beagle are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's twin, $820 million golf-cart-sized rovers. Landing on nearly opposite sides of the planet in January, Spirit and Opportunity will spend 90 days rumbling over the dusty soil in search of water.
Although the NASA rovers are generating the most buzz, the quirky Beagle 2 has a die-hard cheering section.
"Even though I work for NASA, I have to admit I'm rooting for Beagle," says Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist with the space agency's Ames Research Center in California.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 12:36:00 AM [+] ::
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