Space shuttle launches

The U.S. space shuttle Endeavor launched Wednesday night when thunderstorms stayed away. Unfortunately, it released a cloud of foam insulation on launching that might have damaged the shuttle’s ceramic insulation tiles.  The New York Times describes it thus:

Astronauts in space and engineers on the ground will spend the next few days examining and analyzing the damage to see if it might pose a danger to the shuttle on re-entry.

The shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003, killing the seven astronauts on board, because of damage to its wing caused by falling foam during liftoff.

Of course, that last statement is not strictly true. The Columbia was destroyed because nothing was done to assess and correct the damage before re-entry. It was just another episode of NASA’s de facto policy of “Bolt it all together and pray.” So it gave me a little chill to hear that NASA didn’t think that the lightweight foam did any damage. Did that mean they weren’t going to check it? Hadn’t they heard of velocity? Fortunately, they will still inspect the shuttle for damage.

Space shuttle finally to launch

The  U.S. space shuttle Endeavor is about to launch after several days of delays and six holds or re-schedules.

Is the Google Chrome browser doomed?

Farhad Manjoo thinks so. “Google Chrome is doomed!” sounds a bit apocalyptic to me. Everyone whom I’ve talked to who actually tries Google Chrome likes it very much.

CORRECTION: This is about the Chrome operating system, which is based on Ubuntu, not the browser. Thanks, bPer!

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Meteorite yields record number of fragments

A meteorite that crashed into Alberta last year blazed a fireball across the sky. It was tracked by a couple of security cameras. The details of its trajectory were calculated and that let scientists know about where it came down. Fragments were found on pond ice in short order. Since then, volunteers have been looking for the pieces. They’ve brought in more meteorite fragments than ever before for a single strike.

Alan Hildebrand, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Planetary Science, said more than 1000 meteorite pieces have been discovered in farmers’ fields in the Buzzard Coulee region just southeast of the border city of Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan and thousands more remain to be recovered now that the search has resumed.

“Now that the snow is gone we have lots of work to do. In the last few weeks we’ve resumed the search and, on average, collectively searchers are finding dozens a day,” said Hildebrand. “The meteorites came through the winter pretty well; some show a bit of rusty weathering on broken surfaces, but the fusion crusts haven’t changed very much.”

The Buzzard Coulee asteroid fragment weighed approximately 10 tonnes when it entered the atmosphere, and it is estimated that more than 10,000 pieces larger than 1 gram fell to the ground.