So Long Commander Hadfield…

  …and thanks for all the Tweets!

The burning fire that made me want to pursue this for my whole life was absolutely turned on by watching the race to the Moon, eventually seeing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on its surface. – Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield – Image Credit: NASA

On Monday, June 10, Canadian Space Agency astronaut and former International Space Station Commander, Chris Hadfield, announced his up-coming retirement from the agency. After 35 distinguished years in government service, and capturing the hearts of millions world-wide, the 53 year old Sarnia, Ontario native cited a desire to return to Canada in order to pursue other personal and professional challenges. His retirement becomes official on July 3, 2013.

Tweeting Goodbye

Well, Mr Hadfield, while it is certainly possible to retire from the agency, I think, in your case, it will be impossible to retire from being awesome. I won’t get into the details of Mr Hadfield’s amazingly impressive career. For those of you interested they can be found here, and here, and yep, also here. What I will get into is why he matters to us, why he interests us, why he defines the word ‘hero’, and why the world fell in love with him. Simply put, it’s because he let us.

The Tweets

Widely loved for his inspiring messages and breath-taking images from orbit, Cmdr Hadfield became a Twitter superstar.

Chris Hadfield – New York City shining by night. Central Park is visible from space, and maybe even the light on the Statue of Liberty.

Chris Hadfield – The beauty of the Bahamas is surreal; every blue that exists. Taken on New Year’s Day, 2013 from the Space Station.

Chris Hadfield: Polka-Dot Desert – centre-point irrigation farms in Egypt. A life necessity viewed from a stellar vantage point.

Chris Hadfield: Valentine’s Day Tweet - Seven billion hearts, but I can see only one.

These and all of Cmdr Hadfield’s Tweets can be found here.

The Videos

With quirky-cool videos Cmdr Hadfield brought us along with him aboard the ISS. He mastered the art of education through humor, amazement, and inclusion.

More of Chris Hadfield’s videos can be found on the Canadian Space Agency’s YouTube Channel.

The Music

Hadfield had several ‘music from space’ firsts during his free time aboard the ISS during Expedition 35. His song Jewel in the Night, the first song recorded in space, was released via YouTube on December 24, 2012.

His song I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing) preformed with Ed Robertson of  Barenaked Ladies and the Wexford Gleeks on February 8 marked the first ever Earth-Space music collaboration.

Hadfield then closed out his ISS mission by recording the first music video in space. On May 12, after turning over command of the station, Hadfield released a music video rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. As of this writing, the video has received 15,938,725 views on YouTube.

Thank you Commander Hadfield for your service and your inspiration.

Chris Hadfield: Tonight’s Finale: The full moon rises over the only planet we have ever called home.

Martian Road Trips with Curiosity and Opportunity

Road Trippin’ With Curiosity!

According to a June 5 press release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission is approaching its biggest turning point since the ‘7 Minutes of Terror‘ landing of its Curiosity rover inside Mars’ Gale Crater last August.

Curiosity will soon shift into distance-driving mode heading for the base of Mount Sharp, about 5 miles away from its present location. To reach its next destination Curiosity will drive toward the southwest for many months.

“We don’t know when we’ll get to Mount Sharp,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Jim Erickson of JPL, Pasadena, Calif . “This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn’t mean we’re not going to investigate interesting features along the way.”

Hell yes, Jim! Here on Earth we call that a road-trip!

Drilled Hole and ChemCam Marks at ‘Cumberland’

On May 19 the mission drilled a second rock target (‘Cumberland’) for sample material and delivered portions of that rock powder into laboratory instruments in one week, or about one-fourth the time as at the first drilled rock back in February. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on Curiosity was used to check the composition of gray tailings from the drilling.

Scientists are analyzing laboratory-instrument results from portions of the Cumberland sample. Analysis of rock powder from the first target (John Klein) provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favorable conditions for microbial life – the essential elemental ingredients, energy and ponded water that was neither too acidic nor too briny.

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Go Oppy Go!

Opportunity used its panoramic camera (Pancam) to acquire the above view of ‘Solander Point’ during the mission’s 3,325th Martian day, or sol (June 1, 2013).

Nearly 10 years after leaving Earth, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is, somewhat like Willie Nelson, on the road again boldly going to a new study area still many weeks away.

Destination: ‘Solander Point‘!

Solander Point offers Opportunity access to a much taller stack of geological layering than the ‘Cape York‘ area where the rover has worked for the past 20 months. Both areas are raised segments of the western rim of Mars’ Endeavour Crater.

“Getting to Solander Point will be like walking up to a road cut where you see a cross section of the rock layers,” said Ray Arvidson, mission deputy principal investigator, of Washington University, St. Louis. Solander Point also offers plenty of ground that is tilted toward the north, favorable for the solar-powered rover to stay active and mobile through the coming Martian southern-hemisphere winter.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project launched twin rovers in 2003 – Spirit, June 10 and Opportunity, July 7. Both rovers landed in January 2004, and both completed three-month prime missions before beginning years of extended missions. Both found evidence of wet environments on ancient Mars. Spirit ceased operations during its fourth Martian winter, in 2010. Opportunity, again like Willie Nelson, shows symptoms of aging, such as loss of motion in some joints, but continues to accomplish groundbreaking exploration and science.

Oppy! Road-Trippin’ Legend!

As for road-trips, which again Mr Nelson knows a bit about, on May 15, 2013 Opportunity’s  team received confirmation in a transmission from Mars that the rover’s total odometry since landing hit 22.220 statute miles (35.760 kilometers)! This broke a previous record for farthest total off-Earth distance traveled by a NASA vehicle set in December 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visiting the Moon for three days. Cernan and Schmitt drove their mission’s Lunar Rover vehicle 19.3 nautical miles (22.210 statute miles or 35.744 kilometers).

But who holds the ultimate off-world road-trip record? And how close is Oppy to breaking it?

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Off-World Road-Trip Records

The above chart, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech, compares the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles us humans have sent to the surface of Earth’s moon and Mars. Of these, NASA’s Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity are still active. Totals for these two are distances driven as of May 15, 2013.

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All Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Singing In Mississippi

WARNING! The Following Post Contains Earworms.

It’s now Day 10 of my ‘House-Sitting in the Middle-of-Nowhere Mississippi Adventure’. Ten days of little to no face to face contact with other humans. Isolation does things to the mind (wicked things!). I do have the dogs to keep me company. I mean, when they’re not biting me or peeing on things. They also, apparently, find it completely hilarious to bark frantically at 3am at absolutely nothing. (What is it guys? What are you barking at? Is it….Bigfoot? It’s gotta be Bigfoot!!) I’m certain this is some sort of country-dog joke intended to freak out the city-slicker house-sitter. There’s also 2 chickens here on the farm, but they’re not really good company. That might be because I keep eating their attempts at reproducing….

Chicken #1 (lets call her Rhoda): Damn it, I know I left an egg right here earlier this morning.

Chicken #2 (we’ll call this one Diana): So did I! What’s going on here?

Chicken #1: Probably Bigfoot…

Meanwhile, in the kitchen….

Yum!

I might not ought to mention that I’ve eaten 2 entire watermelons in the past 10 days….single handedly. I plan to go out later today in search of another. I’m also thinking about eating this….

…if only I could figure out what it is. Oh, and I’ve been eating a lot of these too….

Yep, I’m foraging, baby! So far, no sign of Bigfoot…..apparently he (it?) doesn’t care for blackberries. This only means more for me!

Being in isolation, with no one to converse with, doesn’t stop me from talking. Though the dogs are fair conversationalists (I mean, when they’re not trying to freak me out), I find myself singing – WAY too much. And I’m a terrible singer, but who cares, right? There’s no one around to hear me – except maybe…Bigfoot!

So, what am I singing? Well, there are a couple of  pretty awesome songs which have been kinda stuck in my head the past few days:

This entirely addictive song by the awesomely cool folks at AsapSCIENCE is one of my favorites.  (Warning: Listen with the full knowledge that you WILL find yourself singing this – over, and over, and over….)

The Elements of the Periodic Table! AND! In order! In order?! Are you kidding me?! Nope, I kid you not. In order! (Notice how I just talked to myself there? Uh huh, I’m doing that a lot lately….)

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Another song stuck in my head is this incredibly cool Thunderstorm Song by one of my newest heroes, Mr Parr, of Mr Parr’s Science Songs! Mr Parr is a 6th grade teacher who’s made a TON of really awesome music-science videos for his students, all parodying popular songs.  THEY ARE AMAZING! And so is Mr. Parr!

This has to be the coolest parody of Gangnam Style since NASA, Johnson Style! (Which can be found on my April 11, 2013 post titled The Epically Awesome Award of Epic Awesomeness!)

Here, in south Mississippi, we (I say ‘we’ as I’m sure that there are other humans in the area….somewhere) get those afternoon storms Mr Parr mentions. We’ve absolutely no shortage of ‘hot and humid’ here. And… thunderstorms just happen to fall squarely into the category of …things I LOVE! They can also provide for some damn dramatic sunsets….

I’m hoping Mr. Parr would approve!

All Photographs: Alex Autin (somewhere in Mississippi (not Mars!))

Earworms provided by AsapSciece and Mr. Parr!!!

***Disclaimer: Bigfoot is a fictitious creature with absolutely no scientific evidence is to its existence. (Don’t try to convince the dogs of this at 3am!) This said, if Bigfoot does show up here I will attempt to engage it in conversation (I’m desperate!). However, if it goes after my watermelons I will open up some Texas-style whoop-ass on his hairy Mississippi butt!