UFOs Over Utah

Last week, people saw and recorded three red lights in the night sky over American Forks, Utah, which is near Provo and Salt Lake City. The lights, which were associated with no sound at all, seemed to be flying in formation. The real kicker, however, is that the red lights were seen to drop white or silver lights from them. A couple of the witnesses, who happened to have professional experience with military flares, said the white lights were not flares.

Local airports and military installations reported nothing in the air that night.

Discovery Ready Again

Space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to be rolled out to the launch pad once again tomorrow evening. Engineers and technicians have completed repairs on the shuttle's external tank that has delayed launch for something around two months.

The last launch of Discovery is currently set for February 24.

Plotting NASA'S Technology Course

NASA began a series of public conferences this week in which it discussed various new technologies that would be important for future long-duration human space missions. Focusing on such technologies is at the heart of President Obama's approach to manned spaceflight policy.

The problem is that NASA's funding doesn't allow the agency to pursue all the technologies, so it is asking the public to help it prioritize the technologies to fund. That might be a clever public relations ploy-- and it could be useful if "public" is carefully defined-- but bringing the American public at large into the process might not be the smartest thing. Every educational survey shows Americans generally are well behind the rest of the developed world in science and math. Closing that gap before giving the general American public a big voice in something as technical as technology development might be a good idea.

Oldest Galaxy So Far

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found the oldest galaxy to date-- one formed only 480 million years after the Big Bang. That means the universe was organizing itself into something like what we would recognize very early on.

The new galaxy is, so far, singular; only one galaxy has been found that early in time. By contrast, astronomers have so far detected 50 galaxies around the 650 million year mark. In the intervening 170 million years, therefore, things were beginning to pop. That popping soon developed into the unimaginable, explosive process that ultimately created the billions or trillions of galaxies in the universe we know.

A Quarter Century Ago

Twenty-five years ago this morning, space shuttle Challenger exploded in a cold, blue Florida sky, killing all seven crewmembers. They were the first American astronauts to die on an actual mission, though others had been lost during training. Given the nature of spaceflight, and the missions astronauts had undertaken, that was an extraordinary safety record.

After Challenger, and a three year hiatus in manned spaceflight, NASA put the shuttle program back together to fly the most spectacular, ambitious missions of the program. Always, however, Challenger was in the background, reminding everyone involved that spaceflight is incredibly dangerous. That memory helped lead to fourteen years worth of successful, safe missions.

NASA, BA Talk

NASA and Bigelow Aerospace are currently in talks to perhaps agree to add a BA inflatable module to ISS. Both sides say the talks are going well.

Such an agreement would be good for both sides. For BA, it would not only give NASA's stamp of approval to the company's inflatable module technology, it would also give BA experience in space with a human-rated module before building its own space station. For NASA, the agreement would expand workspace aboard ISS, allowing for more reseaarch, and it would also strengthen NASA's connection to the commercial space community, which is a key element of President Obama's space policy.

The BA module would be launched to ISS atop a commercial rocket. NASA says the module could be on-orbit two years after signing the agreement-- fast track for the agency.

Voyager 2 At Uranus

Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 2, after a roundabout flight through the outer Solar System, encountered Uranus. It was the first, and so far the only, human spacecraft to reach the planet, providing the first close up images of that world, its rings, and its family of moons.

The Voyager program, consisting of two souped up Mariner spacecraft, was a remarkable success, as it gave humanity a first up close glimpse of the wonders and puzzles of the realm of the gas giants.

In launching the Voyagers, NASA took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets that allowed it to use the gravity of one huge world to slingshot the tiny spacecraft on to the next-- an amazing example of celestial navigation. Likely, another quarter century at least will elapse before another spacecraft reaches Uranus.