We are all feeling the financial pinch!    Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99.

What geek does not love space?!?!  Over the past few months, my iPhone has gained a handful of apps for space enthusiasts.  My 5 year old son and I love to sit and look at these apps to learn about the planets and solar systems.  One night this summer he asked why we cannot look at space ships while we were looking at the stars using pocket universe.  I did not really have an answer.  NASA has come out with their own FREE app to follow current space missions.

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The moment that we’ve all (or at least some of us) have all been waiting for will arrive on Thursday. That’s when NASA is slated to release 15 higher quality video key moments from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This release is part of an Apollo 11 restoration project slated for completion by the fall. Watch the live unveiling on NASA TV at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv or just wait for their invariable YouTube debut.

NASA TV via The Register

If you ask my wife, the money she spent buying me a telescope a few years ago was wasted. If you ask me or my sons, we’d disagree. It isn’t that we use it all that much, but I chalk that up to living in the Northeast – it is hard to hit that small window when the temperature is right for standing outside at night and it gets dark early enough that we can all enjoy it together. The folks at Vito Technology have a great solution – Star Walk, an educational astronomy app for the iPhone andiPod Touch that allows you to browse the night sky right from the palm of your hand without regard for time or weather!

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Shuttle Astronaut Mike Massimino received a lot of press for being the first person to “Tweet from space”. Or did he? New reports are now arriving that perhaps what really happened is @astro_mike mailed his tweets home via email where they were posted by someone on the ground. You know, sort of how your grandma or grandpa may ask you to take a written note and convert it to an email? Next year maybe NASA can add the free Twitter service to their budget.

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NASA astronaut Mike Massimino has been Twittering up a storm in advance of his upcoming trip to maintain the Hubble Space Telescope. He’s managed to attract over 18,500 followers online and while he only has 18 updates – one has to wonder whether NASA will seize the PR value of a Twittering Astronaut.

After all, Twitter is in the news everywhere and is the hot fad of the moment. Celebrities are Twittering and sending pictures of their daily life – why not Astronauts? Which raises the question of whether we may see the first Tweets from space on this upcoming space mission?

Astro_Mike via The Register

In 1980, PBS aired a 13 part series called Cosmos: a Personal Voyage, written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, and narrated by Carl (1934-1996). He was an acclaimed astronomer and astrochemist; but beyond his contributions to science, what made Carl so unique was that he was able to explain issues of biology, chemistry and astronomy in terms that even a child could understand and in a manner that was comfortable and never condescending.

With Carl speaking in his distinctive lilt, dreamy music by Vangelis, and plenty of breathtaking video of the inner-workings of the human body, the earth, the planets, our solar system and beyond, Cosmos is an extravaganza for both the mind and senses…and now you can watch it for FREE. Hey, that’s nothing to sneeze at when the DVD set still costs $100 on Amazon!

Kevin and I were just watching The Harmony of the Worlds last night, and for a series that is over 20 years old (albeit with some updates since then), it just amazes me how relevent and informative it all still is. Start at the beginning if you have never seen it before, and tell me if it’s not some of the most mind-blowing material you have ever seen.

Cosmos on Hulu, Via

According to astronomer Lyman Spitzer’s 1946 paper “Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory”, there were two main advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. The first advantage was that “the angular resolution (smallest separation at which objects can be clearly distinguished) would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere, which causes stars to twinkle and is known to astronomers as seeing.” The second advantage was that “a space-based telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light, which are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere.”

The United Kingdom launched the first orbiting solar telescope in 1962, and in 1968 NASA was firming up plans to launch their own by 1979. Due to funding cuts and red tape, it wasn’t until 1978 when congress finally approved $36,000,000 to fund a space telescope, which was ultimately named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer “who made one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he discovered that the universe was expanding.”

The Hubble Space Telescope was finally set to launch in October 1986, but due to the Challenger disaster earlier that year, all launches were ceased. Space shuttle flights resumed again in 1988, and on April 24, 1990, “shuttle mission STS-31 saw Discovery launch the telescope successfully into its planned orbit.”

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990. It is named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, the Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well-known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, and is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. [source]

According to Wikipedia, since its launch the Hubble Space Telescope has managed to return images of galaxies billions of light years away. So then consider this: that would mean that the light from some of these distant objects may have been traveling for longer than the earth has been in existence – which is a concept that I find completely mind boggling.

If you ever needed a reminder that our earth was just a tiny part of something much bigger, these Hubble images should do the trick…

This “ribbon” is actually a thin “section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.”

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Want to watch $100,000 of US taxpayer money in orbit? This YouTube video allegedly shows the tool bag that slipped out of Astronaut Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper’s mitts. There’s even an (un)official name for this orbiting bag – ISS Toobag. According to a post on Space.com, Edward Light spotted the orbitting tool bag using 10 x 50 binoculars from his backyard in Lakewood New Jersey. Is this really the tool bag? I have no idea but think of how fun it will be to show your relatives after Thanksgiving dinner.

If that doesn’t impress them, fool them with this phony Child Exchange Network or send a chill down their spine with this phony felony search which randomly reports all sorts of felons living in your neighborhood (fake).

Physorg.com

If big telescopes and outer space are your thing, you may be interested in this trial offer from Global-Rent-A-Scope (GRAS). You can take control of a ground-based, Hubble-like remote imaging telescope that is located in Australia and create your own images.

Designed for ease of operation, even a child with little or no previous experience can take command of the controls of this ground-based remote astronomical telescope system. All GRAS remote telescope systems operate in a very similar concept to the Hubble space telescope, with the notable exception that these system are ground based.

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CNN is reporting that NASA engineers are trying to identify an object spotted floating away from the Space Shuttle STS 124 earlier today. According to the news reports, astronauts spotted a rectangular object about 1 to 1.5 feet long floating away from the tail of the shuttle. Here’s hoping that everything is all right with the space shuttle. However a certain part of me cannot help but wonder whether that 1.5 foot long object could be Buzz Lightyear escaping?! Recall that during this mission Buzz Lightyear was to fly with the Shuttle as part of a Disney promotion. NASA’s current theory is that what fell off was a metal clip. I’m not so sure about that and wonder whether Buzz may have taken off in pursuit of Emperor Zurg.

Link: CNN

NASA is hard at work building a heat-resistant, solar powered spacecraft that will plunge into the sun’s atmosphere. The mission will sample solar wind and magnetism with a launch date that could happen as early as 2015. This 7 year mission will bring the Solar Probe+ spacecraft no closer than 7 million km from the sun. The heat shields on the spacecraft must resist temperatures greater than 1400 degrees C. To paraphrase Paris Hilton – “That’s Hot“…

Link: NASA Press Release
Link: Solar Probe Plus: Report of the Science and Technology Definition Team

Amazon has the Celestron SkyScout for $199 (after $100 mail in rebate which requires purchase by June 15, 2008). Use the Celestron SkyScout to locate over 6,000 stars. The cool part of this device is the built in GPS. Simply point the SkyScout at any star and click the target button. The SkyScout tells you the star that you’re looking at. The fun doesn’t stop there though. There’s a built-in SD card slot that allows for an optional Sky Tour audio presentation that will guide you through an audiovisual presentation of the stars. The Amazon price is about $100 (not including the additional $100 rebate) than the price I could find elsewhere, making it a good Father’s Day deal.

Link: Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium

In what certainly must be the “mother of all marketing tie ins”, a joint Disney / NASA press release this morning announces that Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear will be flying into space with the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 when it lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at 5:02 pm on May 31, 2008. Apparently Buzz will spend several months at the International Space Station testing the limits of zero gravity. According to NASA his mission will include a space walk. No comment from NASA on whether Buzz’s tiny shape will aid them in checking the Shuttle for damaged tiles or if he’s purely a last minute selection due to his ability to never need to use the bathroom. More links and a short video follow.

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You can follow NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander tonight as it attempts to touch down on Mars. Catch the action live on NASA TV via the Internet. The coverage starts at 6 pm EST with 7:53 pm EST being the first possible time for confirmation that the Phoenix has landed. I’m quite curious to see this coverage as I still remember grainy pictures of moon landings via an old Black & White TV. It seems a little science fiction-ish that we can watch this on our 4 lb laptops at the neighborhood Starbucks while connected via Wi-Fi.

Link: NASA TV Coverage of Phoenix Mars Lander – 6pm EST 5/24/08

Image courtesy of Scientific American

I saw this article on Scientific American’s  website regarding the hard drive above.  It was recovered from the space shuttle Columbia, and the data itself on the drive was also recovered; this data helped to solve a physics experiment.  The drive was 99 percent recovered by OnTrack Data Recovery.

Now the image above has to be the worst I have EVER seen of a hard disk. This image and story should tell you to do one thing….YOUR BACKUPS!

Do you have similar stories?  Do you have not so similar stories?  Do I have to remind anyone what happened here??