The Curiosity rover on Mars isn't the only thing NASA is busy with these days. According to reports, NASA is getting ready to send a pair of cube-shaped nano-satellites weighing just over 2 pounds into space, but just as interesting as the size and weight is the fact that they're powered by Android smartphones. It's part of a nifty project called PhoneSat overseen by the agency's Small Spacecraft Technology program.
Unidentified hackers gave the term “cyberspace” a whole new meaning when they hacked a couple of US satellites a total of four times in 2007 and 2008. This shocking revelation came as part of a report released last week by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Hit the jump for more.
So, how about that aircraft carrier-sized asteroid that buzzed the earth earlier this week--crazy right? Zipping through the cosmos at approximately 30,000 miles per hour and measuring roughly 1000 feet long, Asteroid 2005 YU55 definitely could have ruined a lot of people’s days if it’d passed 202,000 miles closer--a pittance of a distance by astronomical standards--to us than it did. Are there other space bound rocks out there hellbent on our planet’s destruction? You betcha. Do we know when or how likely it is for them to strike? Nope, but the vigilant space geeks over at Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking do, and their online presence is our Cool Site of the Week.
Can you access protected networks without breaking a sweat? Does just thinking about security exploits get you hot and bothered? Are "spoofing" and "packet sniffing" part of your regular vocabulary? If you answered "Yes" to those questions, and you can prove your hacking prowess at the upcoming DEFCON convention, you may just wind up getting a job offer (and a pension plan) from government agencies like the NSA.
NASA had every intention of building a 3D camera for the next robotic rover to be sent to Mars. Movie director James Cameron has been helping to upgrade the camera on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, called Curiosity, into a 3D camera before it launches into space later thsi year. Unfortunately, time simply ran short and NASA made the call to scrap the project and ship Curiosity as-is.
The Earth's moon isn't made of cheese after all. We know this because NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the Moon at low altitude since around the middle of 2009, sending high resolution images back to our home planet. More recently, NASA posted a ginormous 24,000-pixel square mosaic of the Moon's nearside as never seen in this kind of photographic detail before. The TIF image is available for download, assuming your PC can handle a 549MB photo.
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