Tag: NASA

Nasa will broadcast the song, Across the Universe, through the transmitters of its deep space communications network on Monday – the 40th anniversary of its recording at London's Abbey Road studios. The music will be converted into digital data and sent on a 431 light year-journey towards Polaris, the North Star, in a stunt that also commemorates the space agency's 50th anniversary. February 4 has also been declared Across the Universe Day by Beatles fans across the world, who are urged to play their own recording of the song at the same time as Nasa begins its own broadcast, 7pm in the US, midnight in the UK and 1am Tuesday in Spain. "I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe," said Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, who has given her backing to the project. story Here is the original version, with space imagery, one of several Beatles versions. Fiona Apple's version is nice, and Rufus Wainwright has a beautiful version but he has disabled embedding. Then there is the movie version which I wrote about after seeing it in the theater and liked enough to recommend renting. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Finally, some good news for NOLA: NASA has chosen the Michoud Assembly Facility in Eastern New Orleans as the site for three of its major contracts for its upcoming Constellation Program.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — The route to the moon and perhaps to Mars now goes through New Orleans — and the detour couldn’t come at a better time in the city’s struggle to rebuild its shattered economy after Hurricane Katrina.

With thousands of houses still in ruins and its population reduced by almost 170,000, New Orleans is getting a boost in the form of high-wage jobs and contracts for next-generation space systems at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/…

More below the fold…

*all photos courtesy of NASA

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down

from Jackson Browne’s For A Dancer

Of the many strange episodes that have played themselves out in the course of my life, one of the more interesting was the two and a half years I spent working on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) project.

(This is a revisit to a diary I wrote last year. We’ve passed the peak of the Perseids for this year, but if you have a clear night, you will see random meteor showers. If you are patient. I watched at least three fall by tonight, between the clouds, as they chased the dark aside. Make a wish now.)

From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things

Unchained stars, released from the bonds of eternity, flailing and burning their way through the universe, past our eyes, but visible if we but keep eyes wide open, staring outward, staring upward. Sometimes staring slightly off-center of what we want to see.  Looking at stars is like that – sometimes you cannot look directly at a star to really see it.