Nothing official on the HST website at STScI at the moment (7pm EDT, 09/29/08), but MSNBC is reporting that NASA is delaying the Hubble Servicing mission because Hubble's command and data handling systems failed over the weekend.
[Hat tip: Jim Herald]
[Update: Bad Astronomy had a detailed post 35 minutes ago. Hubble in safe mode. See it for the details.]
"Hey! I risked my life in space and all I got was this camping chair" is what Chinese
astronaut Zhai Zhigang appears to be saying after the crew of three emerged from their re-entry capsule on Sunday.
Actually what he said was “It was a glorious mission, full of challenges, but the result is perfect.”
Those old-school spherical re-entry capsules certainly have a lot of retro-chic.
PDFs of the powerpoint/keynote presentations made at the "Suzaku Science After Three Years" workshop held at Johns Hopkins on September 10 2008, and organized by Tahir Yaqoob and Kendrah Murphy are available online at the HEASARC Suzaku Guest Observer Facility.
Suzaku (formerly known as Astro-E2 prior to launch) is a joint Japanese/NASA space mission dedicated to X-ray astronomy. Although a smaller mission in terms of cost than the current heavy-weights of X-ray astronomy, Chandra and XMM-Newton, Suzaku has some unique capabilities and is producing some very interesting results.
While innocently watching Mythbusters on the DVR over the w/e I ended up seeing two very weird adverts by Sharp - one on LCD TVs and one on solar panels, both hosted by a white-haired guy introduced in a note at the bottom of the screen as "Gerard Fasel - Professor of Astrophysics."
"No way, never heard of him...", I thought, this is just like those "Real Customer - Not an Actor" things they put on adverts all the time. You can watch parts of the Sharp/Fasel solar panel advert here, its a little weird if you ask me.
Anway, I was wrong. Gerard Fasel is actually a Visiting Professor at Pepperdine, although more involved in teaching than current research. He also happens to be a part time actor (IMDB), his next role being "Albino Security Guard" in the Truth About Angels, which is probably related to how he got the Sharp advert gig.
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