"What dreams may come..."

 

 “To sleep, perchance to dream...”

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I.

Although the Martian storm* that held the Opportunity Mars rover in powered-down sleep since June 10th of this year has finally subsided after 180 days, it remains unresponsive to NASA's attempts to establish communications.  So far Mission Control has made over 350 attempts to contact the disabled rover, with no results.

However, Opportunity still has a chance.  Although the sandstorm has abated, the winds continue, which offers the possibility that residual dust will be blown off Opportunity's solar panels so that it can recharge its batteries and resume operation, which would certainly the best of all the possible conclusions to the rover's current plight.

Until that happy outcome, sleep on in peace, Opportunity. May your digital dreams take you to a place where your batteries never need charging, your memory arrays are sharp and fast, the sands are smooth under your wheels and the skies are always clear.

- Sid

* Did you know that there's a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that, among other things, keeps track of Martian weather for NASA? It was launched in 2005 with the mission of searching for historical evidence of water on Mars, and, as with so much of the technology we've sent to Mars, has remained in place and continued to work.

"There's a fire, sir."

Having just announced my love affair with the International Space Station, it seems unfortunate to learn that scientists have discovered antibiotic-resistant bacteria of the Enterobacter* strain on the station.

Okay, the good news is that they're not pathogenic** to humans. The bad news is that they exist at all as a different form from related Terran bacteria. The really bad news is the missing part of the good news: they're not pathogenic to humans YET.  Computer simulations indicate a 79 percent probability that they will eventually evolve into a human disease pathogen, which seems like a bad thing.

Anybody remember The Andromeda Strain...?

- Sid

* If you're unfamiliar with the Enterobacter strain of bacteria, Wikipedia™ informs us that it is "a genus of common Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae."

You're welcome. 

** Able to cause disease. Again, you're welcome.

A Personal Observation on the ISS: I Don't Like It.

I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's. 

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield

It's true - I don't like the ISS.

I love it.

 

I love that there's this massive science fiction prop up there in low earth orbit, second brightest thing in the night sky after the Moon, traveling at the ridiculous speed of 28,000 kilometers an hour and zooming around the planet once every 90 minutes.

I love the pictures of the ISS, and I love the pictures from the ISS, the Canadarm and DEXTRE, incredible photos of the Earth, astronauts doing spacewalks, all that stuff, because they all look like pictures of the future, except they're being taken now.

I really love that people on the ISS have worn Star Trek uniforms and waved DON'T PANIC towels and shot David Bowie homage music videos and done all that sort of silly human stuff that has nothing to do with science.

Because they're living there, and that's what people do when they live someplace, silly human stuff - and we do that now, as a species, some of us sort of live in space, how incredibly cool is that?  And what a great step into the future - I don't know about small steps and giant leaps, but at least we're moving forward.

And when they come back, the astronauts seem to love and appreciate the planet just a little bit more than when they left, which has to be a good thing.

So, again, I don't like the ISS - I LOVE IT.

- Sid