Aries I Test Successful

AP reports that 1 million pounds of solid propellant were ignited "in a split second."

Alliant Techsystems Press Release: ATK and NASA Successfully Test Ares First Stage Development Motor.

PROMONTORY, Utah, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NASA and Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK) made history today as they conducted the first test of the Ares I first stage five-segment development solid rocket motor, marking the first steps into a new era of space exploration. It is the most powerful and reliable solid rocket booster in the world, and is planned for NASA's Ares I and Ares V rockets.

The initial data showed the motor performed as designed, producing 3.6 million pounds of thrust and burning for over two minutes. The first stage motor for Ares I measures 12 feet in diameter and 154 feet in length. During the test sensors and gauges collected 650 channels of data to accomplish 46 test objectives. The data from this test will help validate how Ares I will perform in flight.

NASA Observes Comets Then Ignores The Observations

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Sir Winston Churchill

NASA's Swift Looks To Comets For A Cool View.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Explorer satellite rocketed into space in 2004 on a mission to study some of the highest-energy events in the universe. The spacecraft has detected more than 380 gamma-ray bursts, fleeting flares that likely signal the birth of a black hole in the distant universe. In that time, Swift also has observed 80 exploding stars and studied six comets.

Comets? ... Comets are "dirty snowballs" made of frozen gases mixed with dust.

Comets are dirty snowballs? I wonder why they haven't melted in the sun during the past million years. It looks more like a unicorn than a snowball.

X-rays come from superhot plasmas.

Eureka!!!

What do cold comets have in common with exploding stars or the birth of black holes?

Good question. I suspect either plasma or else absolutely nothing.

"It was a big surprise in 1996 when the NASA-European ROSAT mission showed that comet Hyakutake was emitting X-rays," says Dennis Bodewits, a NASA Postdoctural Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "After that discovery, astronomers searched through ROSAT archives. It turns out that most comets emit X-rays when they come within about three times Earth's distance from the sun."

Hmmm, they emit x-rays but they don't melt. Sounds like the snowballs I know. A database full of comets observed and every time they emit x-rays it's a surprise? When will it stop being a surprise?

Bodewits is working with the Swift team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to study comets using data from the spacecraft's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT). "Swift is an excellent platform for studying dynamic processes in comets," he says.

Ultraviolet wavelengths let astronomers identify the chemical composition of the comet's atmosphere, observe the structure of dust emission, and identify the rotation of the comet's icy nucleus. X-rays reveal the structure of the comet's gas and the state of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that flows from the sun at speeds upwards of 900,000 mph.

Plasma? What's that all about? Ah nevermind, just forget it. Let's talk about gravity some more.

Swift's UVOT captured a striking sequence that shows unresolved blobs of dust trailing from a crumbling comet.

Dust or plasma? Must be dust.