Pluto's New Moon

Researchers using the Hubble telescope have discovered a previously unknown moon of Pluto.  The new mini-satellite has an estimated diameter of 13-34 km (8-21 miles), which is truly very small.  By contrast, Earth's moon has a diameter of approximately 3500 km. The new moon is being initially called P4.

From the NASA science news article:

The dwarf planet’s entire moon system is believed to have formed by a collision between Pluto and another planet-sized body early in the history of the solar system. The smashup flung material that coalesced into the family of satellites observed around Pluto. 

"This surprising observation is a powerful reminder of Hubble's ability as a general purpose astronomical observatory to make astounding, unintended discoveries," said Jon Morse, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

P4 was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. The moon was not seen in earlier Hubble images because the exposure times were shorter. There is a chance it appeared as a very faint smudge in 2006 images, but was overlooked because it was obscured.

The Hubble Space Telescope is such a great instrument.  It is capable of such a great amount of observations and has really revolutionized our understanding of the our solar system and galaxy.  It has also been utilized as a great science outreach tool.  The vast majority of the beautiful pictures of space floating around the internet are courtesy of Hubble. See some of them here: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble.

The Hubble will eventually fall out of orbit, due mainly to atmospheric drag, sometime between 2019 and 2032.  The large range is due to the uncertainty of how active the Sun will be, which effects the amount of drag on the satellite.

The James Webb Space Telescope is was set to succeed Hubble in the next decade or so.  However, the current budget situation in the US, it is on the chopping block.  I am not too optimistic that the project will survive. 

Haiku Monday (Late) - Research Proposals

Research Proposals

Bleary - lack of sleep

Caffeine is beautiful no?

Hallucinations

The Federal Budget, NASA and Science Funding

Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-51

NASA has been spared major cuts in the federal budget for 2011.

This means NASA can continue to develop a heavy lift rocket, which they desperately need, since after the shuttle program is retired there will be no native US technology for getting people or cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).

In the 2011 federal budget, NASA was given a budget of $18.5 billion.  Seems like a lot, right?  Well let us really break it down compared to the total US budget and some other federal agencies.

Total Budget: $3.69 trillion or $3,690 billion

NASA:               $18.5 billion (0.5% of total budget)
Defense              $738 billion (20% of total budget)
Social Security    $738 billion (20% of total budget)
Health Services   $381 billion (10.3% of total budget)

So, in comparison, NASA's budget is only one half of a percent of the federal budget.  Not even a drop in the bucket.

Overall, the 2011 budget was very kind to science.  The National Institute of Health saw a budget increase of about 3%.  The National Science Foundation saw an 8% increase.  The Department of Energy science programs saw a 4.5% increase.  Note, all these increases are relative to 2010.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

Links for data on the budget:
I took numbers from this NY Times graph. And the Washington Post also has a nice graphic.
Note: There are differences between how NYT and WP define different spending programs.  It is hard to reconcile the two.

NASA Aeronautics News

In a bill before the Senate this week, a proposed change to the long standing leadership of NASA in the area of aeronautics has died. The initial bill had language which would transfer the leadership of aeronautics research in the US from NASA to the FAA.

An amendment passed with a vote of 96-1 to drop the language concerning aeronautics research from the bill and keep NASA in charge of aeronautics research in the US.

I view this as a smart move. Why add more bureaucracy to an already extremely bureaucratic issue? Well done Senate.