In The Future, Your Interstellar Tourist Selfies Will Look Like This…!!!

June 22, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Imagine a world some time in the semi-distant future where space travel is a banal indulgence not unlike a luxury cruise. What would you do upon stepping on Mars soil, an astronaut helmet over your head and Earth but a small speck in the distance.

Be real, would you take a selfie? It would get soooooo many likes.

French photographer Julien Mauve juxtaposes the looming potential of space exploration with the stereotypical actions of earthly tourists in his narrative series “Greetings From Mars.” The sci-fi photos combine alien landscapes with behavior that’s all too familiar — performing for the camera, inserting oneself into foreign landscapes, and striking a pose.

“I’ve been fascinated with Mars since I was a child,” Mauve explained to The Huffington Post. “I can picture myself back in college making presentations about it. We hear a lot about NASA, Elon Musk and SpaceX these days. Mars One also, the company that offers people a one way ticket to establish the first human colony on Mars (and intend to create a TV show out of it). Space exploration and colonization is the greatest adventure of the century and the fact that we may witness it in our life-time makes it even more exciting.”

Mauve couples the possibility of space tourism in the future with the reality of social media influence in the present. “We’ve literally developed a new language to communicate emotions through pictures and that really fascinates me,” the artist said, identifying smartphones as the technology that allows us to write our own stories in real time.

“In the mean time, Earth has become really small. We are only 12 hours and $800 away from the other side of the world. Those easy traveling conditions have made tourism a lucrative activity. People can visit and enjoy places we would have never imagined only 50 years ago… Once transportation issues will be solved and if we don’t encounter any massive disaster, space tourism for middle class people is something we can imagine happening in less than 100 years.”

Mauve’s series offers a wonderfully deadpan view of the red planet, with anonymous explorers eager to survey the grounds, and, possibly more importantly, document the process. “It’s an observation of our current behaviors and a projection of what we hope for the future,” he explained. “I’m not trying to stick to the scientific truth.”

Of his series, he explains the setting: “It’s a couple experiencing Mars as tourists for the first time and sharing their experience through photographs. They include themselves in front of those landscapes and affirm their presence but the funny thing is that we don’t see their faces. It could be anyone in those suits and, in fact, it goes against the original purpose of taking a selfie or souvenir pictures. It was also a way to illustrate this endless pursuit of self-definition we seek with pictures.”

Check back with us in 100 years to see if Mauve’s grim prediction has come to life. If so, please let us know what filters look best in space. Thanks.

Julian MauveJulian Mauve PhotographyPhotographySpace PhotographySelfiesTourismSelfie TourismMarsSpaceflightSpace Tourism

Source….http://www.huffingtonpost.com/priscilla-frank

Natarajan

NASA’s Mission to Pluto …!!!

June 19, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

It’s been over 3,000 days and nearly three billion miles since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft set out for Pluto.

It’s a mission that faced countless roadblocks and setbacks before it ever got off the ground. Now the spacecraft is closing in on Pluto and its moon system that sit at the very edge of our solar system.

This will be the first time we’ve ever visited the distant dwarf planet.

The National Space Society put together an incredible video preview of the history-making moment. It has the vibe of a movie trailer, complete with epic narration and stunning visuals, and it perfectly captures why space enthusiasts are so psyched about the New Horizons mission.

The video sweeps you through a timeline of the last half century of space exploration using beautiful images of each planet we’ve explored, starting with Venus in 1962 and ending with Neptune in 1989.

New Horizons will reach Pluto and its moons on July 14, and they will be “the farthest worlds ever to be explored by humankind,” the video says.

So far that the sun appears as a faint dot:

And the moment we reach Pluto, we’ll get an up close look at a world no one has seen before. All we’ve glimpsed of Pluto are fuzzy, far-away images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. New Horizons will send back images thousands of times closer.

“Who knows what wonders await us at these new horizons.”

We’ll have to wait and see.

NASA is already counting down the days, hours, minutes, and even seconds until the arrival.

You can watch the whole video below, which we definitely recommend:

Source….www.businessinsider .in and http://www.you tube.com

Natarajan

SOFIA at Sunset

June 18, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

SOFIA at Sunset.

Image of the Day…Tropical Storm Bill from ISS…

June 17, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Tropical Storm Bill From the International Space Station

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly), currently on a one-year mission to the International Space Station, took this photograph of Tropical Storm Bill in the Gulf of Mexico as it approached the coast of Texas, on June 15, 2015. Kelly wrote, “Concerned for all in its path including family, friends & colleagues.”

Image Credit: NASA

Source….www.nasa.gov

Qatar Airlines Voted World”s Best Airline 2015…

June 17, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

THE annual Skytrax awards for the world’s best airline has been announced, with a shuffle of key players on this year’s list.

Qatar was voted the best airline for 2015, bumping last year’s winner Cathay Pacific to third place.

It’s not the first time Qatar has claimed the top spot. It won in 2011 and 2012 and has twice been voted runner up. It also took home best airline in the Middle East and best business class seat.

The presitigous Skytrax awards are judged by 18.9 million passengers in 110 countries around the world who vote on factors such as comfort, friendliness of cabin crew and in-flight food.

Qatar CEO Akbar Al Baker told CNN it was a reflection of their staff.

“It’s a very clear accolade on behalf of the staff — they are the real recipients, I’m just their leader”, he said.

AirAsia won the best low-cost airline category for 2015 despite the tragic and fatal crash of flight QZ8501 last year.Source: Getty Images

The top ten airlines included Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Turkish and Emirates. Qantas came in at number 10 on the list.

In the low-cost airline category AirAsia was voted the world’s best for the seventh year in a row, despite the tragic accident in the Java Sea last year that killed all 162 people on-board flight QZ8501.

Reported in CNN, co-founder and group CEO Tony Fernandes said the award “meant a lot, after all we’ve been through. I wouldn’t normally say the airline industry is sweet, but today it felt sweet.

“We’ve won it seven times, but this one means the most, because of what happened in the early part of this year.”

Other awards included Garuda Indonesia for best cabin crew, Air France for most improved airline, EVA Air for cleanest aircraft cabins and Cathay Pacific for best transpacific airline.

The list of the world’s top 100 airlines for 2015 can be viewed here.

The best airlines for 2015

1. Qatar Airways

2. Singapore Airlines

3. Cathay Pacific Airways

4. Turkish Airlines

5. Emirates

6. Etihad Airways

7. ANA All Nippon Airways

8. Garuda Indonesia

9. EVA Air

10. Qantas Airways

source….www.news.com.au

Natarajan

This 20 year old website Hosts Just One image Everyday…Has Millions of Fans !!!

June 17, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Twenty years ago, two astrophysicists – Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff – created Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). The website is simple and harkens back to the days of the early web: Every post is just one image and a bit of text describing the photo, with links out to sources of information.

During its first year, in 1995, the site received about 12 visits a day. Today they’re way past a million daily visitors, according to The Verge.

The two are active researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. How did they become guardians of the treasured website?

“So we were getting these emails that had these image attachments, sometimes about the Hubble Space Telescope, sometimes from something else, and the people sending these emails had no idea what that was. It would say, ‘Look at this, it’s colorful and something astronomical. Isn’t that cool?’ So we thought maybe something we could do was take these images and explain them one after the next,” Nemiroff told The Verge’s Sean O’Kane.

How do they chose what to feature on the site? Well, it’s a bit of personal preference:

Robert Nemiroff: I just like the stuff where you look at it and say “Wow, what’s that!” I’m somewhat jaded after 20 years. It has to work for me before I try to make it work for other people.

Jerry Bonnell: I seem to be a sucker for the big, beautiful spiral galaxy images.

Back in those days cameras with high-enough quality to take great space pictures weren’t as plentiful. They were genuinely worried that they’d run out of images to post.

As Nemiroff said:

Before we posted our first image we debated this, Jerry and I, as to whether we were going to run out of images in a few days and then say, “Well that was stupid.” But actually there were many images around even back then. And NASA’s Ranger series took tens of thousands of images of the lunar surface, so if we had to we could just start putting up other pictures of the lunar surface. “Here’s another crater that’s a little bit different than yesterday’s crater.” But we never ran out of images.

And Bonnell:

I used to have to be more proactive. I would explore what was online and available in the NASA archives online, and I would also make occasional trips to photo libraries that I could find at Goddard and NASA headquarters and look at the prints.

Now, the two-person team gets hundreds of submissions of images from their millions of fans. They still do all the work just the two of them, though:

I usually do the beginnings of the weeks and Jerry does the ends of the weeks, and Wednesday can go either way.

I will do several in a row. I’ll do most of my week maybe on Thursday or Friday, sometimes on Saturday or Sunday. Sometimes I’ll leave Wednesday to the night before in case there’s some kind of breaking news. Jerry will do the ends of the weeks, he usually waits until the night before, and works on it during the afternoon.

To celebrate the anniversary, the two re-created Johannes Vermeer’s paintings The Astronomer and The Geographer using more than 5,000 APOD images that have appeared during the last 20 years.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2015 June 16

APOD

If you like space you can follow the APOD stream in many ways: Twitter account; Google+ page; on Facebook; on Instagram, in apps, and asubreddit.

source….Jennifer Welsh in .www.businessinsider.in

Natarajan

” What LIFE on Mars would be …” ?

June 16, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

IN A quest to see if people could survive living on Mars, NASA sent six scientists to Hawaii for eight months in an enclosure that simulates the conditions of life on the Red Planet.

This meant that fresh air, sunshine and fresh food were all off the table. The only food available was anything that could be freeze-dried. If they wanted to talk a short walk outside their 11-meter diameter dome, they even had to chuck on a space suit.

They were monitored by surveillance cameras, body movement trackers and electronic surveys.

Last week the crew were finally free to leave their Mars dome.

The scientist’s home for eight months. Source: AP

Crew member Jocelyn Dunn told AP it was awesome to feel the sensation of wind on her skin.

“When we first walked out the door, it was scary not to have a suit on,” said Dunn, 27, a doctoral candidate at Purdue University. “We’ve been pretending for so long.”

The dome’s volcanic location, silence and its simulated airlock seal provided an atmosphere similar to space. Looking out the dome’s porthole windows, all the scientists could see were lava fields and mountains, said University of Hawaii professor Kim Binsted, principal investigator for the study.

Tracking the crew members’ emotions and performance in the isolated environment could help ground crews during future missions to determine if a crew member is becoming depressed or if the team is having communication problems.

“Astronauts are very stoic people, very level-headed, and there’s a certain hesitancy to report problems,” Binsted said. “So this is a way for people on the ground to detect cohesion-related problems before they become a real issue.”

Spending eight months in a confined space with six people had its challenges, but crew members relieved stress doing team workouts and yoga. They were able to use a solar-powered treadmill and stationary bike, but only in the afternoons on sunny days.

“When you’re having a good day its fine, it’s fun. You have friends around to share in the enjoyment of a good day,” Dunn said. “But if you have a bad day, it’s really tough to be in a confined environment. You can’t get out and go for a walk … it’s constantly witnessed by everyone.”

Could we be living on the Red Planet soon? Source: AP

The hardest part was being far away from family and missing events like her sister’s wedding, for which she delivered a toast via video, Dunn said. “I’m glad I was able to be there in that way, but … I just always dreamt of being there to help,” she said.

The first thing crew members did when they emerged from the dome was to chow down on foods they’ve been craving — juicy watermelon, devilled eggs, peaches and croissants, which was a step up from the freeze dried chilli they’d been eating.

Next on Dunn’s list: going for a swim. Showers in the isolated environment were limited to six minutes per week, she said.

“To be able to just submerge myself in water for as long as I want, to feel the sun, will be amazing,” Dunn said. “I feel like a ghost.”

Source…news.com.au

Natarajan

Amazing Vertical Take Off…Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner…!!!

June 13, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

IT has to be seen to be believed.

In the lead-up to the Paris Air Show, which begins on June 15, Boeing has set the bar high after releasing a video of its newest version of the Dreamliner aircraft — the 787-9 — performing some impressive aerial moves.

But it’s the takeoff which has everyone talking as the passenger jet makes an almost vertical ascent seconds after leaving the ground.

The steep climb looks impressive, though it has its doubters.

Boeing 767 pilot Patrick Smith told CNN: “It looks like the takeoff is at a near vertical 90 degree angle — trust me it’s not.”

He said a 787 with passengers making a 20 degree pitch-up on takeoff would be pretty strong.

“Presumably the plane was very light because it wasn’t carrying any passengers, probably had a very light fuel load, no freight, so it would have been able to perform a steeper than normal ascent — but not to the extent the video seems to show,” Smith said.

That’s steep ... the Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 takeoff

That’s steep … the Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 takeoff Source: Supplied

video clip..

Source….www.news.com.au and http://www.youtube.com

Natarajan

“Here’s why no one has found a trace of missing Flight MH370….”

June 13, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

A Texas A&M University professor and his team in Qatar have a mathematical theory about why search crews have found no trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 more than a year after it went missing.

Dr. Goong Chen, whose research on this theory was published in the American Mathematical Society’s journal, argues that the plane could have nosedived into the Indian Ocean at a 90-degree angle and remained somewhat intact as it sank to the bottom.

At 1:30 a.m. on March 8, the plane carrying 239 people dropped off air-traffic-control screens, less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Flight MH370 is the fact that, despite experts tracking the plane’s satellite pings to the southern Indian Ocean, searchers have never found a debris field or oil slicks from the supposed crash.

Texas A&M noted that in the case of Air France Flight 447, crews recovered thousands of pieces of floating debris from the Atlantic Ocean just days after the plane crashed in 2009.

Chen explains that if the plane were to enter the ocean at another angle, it would have created a large “bending moment” from the external force of hitting the water, causing the fuselage to break up.

In this type of situation, there would likely be a field of floating debris on the surface of the water.

But a vertical entry would be much smoother, with a smaller “bending moment.” The plane’s wings would have likely broken off immediately, but since they’re heavy, they probably would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

So if the plane nosedived into the ocean, it could have sank somewhat intact and landed belly-up on the ocean floor, according to the research paper.

The ocean’s current would have guided the plane to its resting place at the bottom. Lightweight debris like seat cushions and passenger belongings probably wouldn’t be able to float to the ocean’s surface if the plane’s body sank intact.

The plane stalling from a steep climb, aircraft mechanisms malfunctioning, and the plane running out of fuel could have caused MH370 to plunge into the ocean at a sharp angle, according to the research paper.

Chen and his team created simulations of what the descent might have looked like:

MH370 Malaysia Airlines plane simulation

Texas A&M University at Qatar / Notices of the American Mathematical Society

The plane entering the water at this angle wouldn’t have created the same large waves as an entry at a lesser angle. Big waves would have likely caused more break-up of the plane at the surface.

The animation below shows the supposed distribution of pressure. The paper notes that aviation experts say that how a plane enters the water determines how it breaks up.

Texas A&M University at Qatar / Notices of the American Mathematical Society

In other scenarios Chen and his team looked at, the plane’s angle of entry would have created bigger waves and more pressure, which likely would have caused the plane to break up more near the water’s surface.

Texas A&M University at Qatar / Notices of the American Mathematical Society

Illustration showing a diving water entry.

Texas A&M University at Qatar / Notices of the American Mathematical Society

Illustration showing a rolling water entry.

Chen and his team concluded that based on the various scenarios they mathematically examined, a nosedive is the mostly likely explanation of what happened to the plane. If the plane had entered the ocean at a different angle, the paper notes, search crews would have likely found debris by now.

Texas A&M University at Qatar/Notices of the American Mathematical Society

“This particular assertion is speculative but forensic,” the paper concludes. The team noted that they based this theory on computed data, aviation precedents, and atmospheric and ocean surface conditions.

The disappearance of MH 370 is one of the most bizarre and tragic aviation mysteries of all time. Investigators have not offered any conclusive explanation as to what happened to the plane after it disappeared from radar.

Australian officials announced last month that teams are expanding the MH370 search area in the Indian Ocean. They said that if the plane isn’t found there, they’re not sure where else to look.

Source….Pamela Engel in http://www.businessinsider.in

Natarajan

” Footage From Cockpit “…Plane Landing in one of the ‘Scariest ‘ Airports in the World…

June 9, 2015June 9, 2015Natarajan1 Comment

There’s a belief that computers do all of the work in the cockpit, but this amazing video shows British Airways pilots conquering one of the most challenging runways in the world.

With cameras mounted in the flight deck, the clip shows a pilot’s-eye view as a BA plane approaches and touches down on the runway in Funchal, on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

It may seem like a routine event, but captains Ally Wilcox and Ian Mills had to contend with high winds and were unable to rely on the plane’s instruments as they landed at an airport nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and a hill dotted with home

click and watch the video clip below…

Captains Ally Wilcox and Ian Mills had to contend with high winds as they approached the runway

Footage from the cockpit provides a perspective that most passengers will never see as they arrive on the stunning island for a relaxing holiday.

It can be a turbulent landing, and after an extension was built in 2000 part of the runway is on stilts over the sea.

Captain Wilcox narrated the video, which was shot on a recent flight from London, telling viewers Funchal is a unique airfield because pilots cannot land a plane there unless they have special approval from Portugal’s civil aviation authority.

He said BA and Airbus have developed a bespoke plan that has been approved by authorities, which includes using banana sheds as a waypoint to navigate the ‘tricky terrain’ to the left of the runway.

Footage from the cockpit provides a perspective that most passengers will never see

In order to land in Funchal pilots must undergo training and be approved by Portuguese aviation authorities

Only 20 BA captains are permitted to fly into Funchal, and each one had to pass a two-hour simulated training session.

Captain Wilcox said: ‘The island is very tricky because of the terrain … it means we have to fly around the bay and very close to the terrain before completing a curving approach onto the runway.’

As the airport does not have an instrument landing system, pilots must navigate around the bay visually using good judgment, he added.

Funchal is frequently included in lists of the ‘scariest’ runways in the world due to its challenges

High winds add to the degree of difficulty.

He tells viewers: ‘As it’s out in the Atlantic the wind is often strong and very variable in nature.

‘As with this approach we faced exactly that challenge with the head wind becoming a cross wind pushing us towards the terrain and here ending up as a tail wind as we landed on the runway.’

Given its location and turbulent winds, Funchal is frequently included in lists of the ‘scariest’ runways in the world.

Source….www.dailymail.co.uk and http://www.you tube.com

Natarajan

Take off with Natarajan

Airport Natarajan's Digital home

Aviation

Amazing Vertical Take Off…Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner…!!!

MORE:

Tropical Storm Bill From the International Space Station

Astronomy Picture of the Day