Helicopters Arrive At National Archives For Exhibit Opening

Tell this museum how you're feeling and it'll text you back a piece of art

When you text San Francisco Museum of Modern Art how you're feeling, it responds with a work of art that captures your mood.

When you text San Francisco Museum of Modern Art how you’re feeling, it responds with a work of art that captures your mood.

GUYS! We live in an amazing world! I just texted the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “send me food,” and they sent me a picture of vegetables from their collection. My boyfriend texted them the cactus emoji and they sent back a picture of a cactus. This is blowing my mind!

the x files’ nonexistent writers room: one of the biggest holes we’ve dug ourselves into with the william storyline is the existence of his adoptive parents, the van de kamps. mulder and scully can’t just whisk their son away from the only family he’s ever known, right? that wouldn’t be moral or ethical, how do we fix this

james wong:

Navigating Space by the Stars

A sextant is a tool for measuring the angular altitude of a star above the horizon and has helped guide sailors across oceans for centuries. It is now being tested aboard the International Space Station as a potential emergency navigation tool for guiding future spacecraft across the cosmos. The Sextant Navigation investigation will test the use of a hand-held sextant that utilizes star sighting in microgravity. 

Read more about how we’re testing this tool in space!  

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Always a better tomorrow

A Hitchhiker’s Ride to Space

This month, we are set to launch the latest weather satellite from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Joint Polar Satellite System-1, or JPSS-1, satellite will provide essential data for timely and accurate weather forecasts and for tracking environmental events such as forest fires and droughts.

Image Credit: Ball Aerospace

JPSS-1 is the primary satellite launching, but four tiny satellites will also be hitchhiking a ride into Earth orbit. These shoebox-sized satellites (part of our CubeSat Launch Initiative) were developed in partnership with university students and used for education, research and development. Here are 4 reasons why MiRaTA, one of the hitchhikers, is particularly interesting…

Miniaturized Weather Satellite Technology

The Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) CubeSat is set to orbit the Earth to prove that a small satellite can advance the technology necessary to reduce the cost and size of future weather satellites. At less than 10 pounds, these nanosatellites are faster and more cost-effective to build and launch since they have been constructed by Principal Investigator Kerri Cahoy’s students at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (with lots of help). There’s even a chance it could be put into operation with forecasters.

The Antenna? It’s a Measuring Tape

That long skinny piece coming out of the bottom right side under MiRaTA’s solar panel? That’s a measuring tape. It’s doubling as a communications antenna. MiRaTA will measure temperature, water vapor and cloud ice in Earth’s atmosphere. These measurements are used to track major storms, including hurricanes, as well as everyday weather. If this test flight is successful, the new, smaller technology will likely be incorporated into future weather satellites – part of our national infrastructure.

Tiny Package Packing a Punch MiRaTA will also test a new technique using radio signals received from GPS satellites in a higher orbit. They will be used to measure the temperature of the same volume of atmosphere that the radiometer is viewing. The GPS satellite measurement can then be used for calibrating the radiometer. “In physics class, you learn that a pencil submerged in water looks like it’s broken in half because light bends differently in the water than in the air,” Principal Investigator Kerri Cahoy said. “Radio waves are like light in that they refract when they go through changing densities of air, and we can use the magnitude of the refraction to calculate the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere with near-perfect accuracy and use this to calibrate a radiometer.” 

What’s Next?

In the best-case scenario, three weeks after launch MiRaTA will be fully operational, and within three months the team will have obtained enough data to study if this technology concept is working. The big goal for the mission—declaring the technology demonstration a success—would be confirmed a bit farther down the road, at least half a year away, following the data analysis. If MiRaTA’s technology validation is successful, Cahoy said she envisions an eventual constellation of these CubeSats orbiting the entire Earth, taking snapshots of the atmosphere and weather every 15 minutes—frequent enough to track storms, from blizzards to hurricanes, in real time.

Learn more about MiRaTA

Watch the launch!

The mission is scheduled to launch this month (no sooner than Nov. 14), with JPSS-1 atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket lifting off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. You’ll be able to watch on NASA TV or at nasa.gov/live.

Watch the launch live HERE on Nov. 14, liftoff is scheduled for Tuesday, 4:47 a.m.! 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Nutmeg and Kerosene - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Candle + Book Giveaway

Hey everyone! The Literary Snob is teaming up with The Happy Bard Candle Co. to do a double giveaway this September. We’re all on the same trivia team in the real world (Sean Bean Lives!) and I absolutely love Happy Bard’s literary inspired candles. They’re about to release their next line of literary candles and one of the new scents will be a fan submission! So we’re holding a contest and double giveaway to find the fairest combo in the land. 

Reblog this post with your submission for a literary candle scent. You can send in as many submissions as your heart desires and tag anyone who dreams of being a candle virtuoso. The Happy Bard Candle Co. will pick their favorite submission at the end of the contest, create the candle, and send it to you! Plus I will send the winner one of the newly released Vintage Minis of your choice.

GIVEAWAY RULES

Reblog this post with a book & fragrance combo suggestion

Follow The Happy Bard Candle Co. on either Instagram or Facebook

Follow The Literary Snob on Tumblr

Have fun and be creative!

RULES

There is no limit on submissions, so reblog away! Currently, The Happy Bard Candle Co. cannot ship internationally, so anybody can participate but only those in the U.S. can win. Contest ends Saturday, Sept. 30 at midnight.

We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! Plus I might throw in an extra prize for whoever makes me laugh the hardest. Good luck!

Delicate Temporary Tattoos That Look Like Real Watercolor Illustrations

London-based brand and temporary tattoo designers PAPERSELF prides itself in the creation of artistic temporary tattoos. Adorned with soft pastels and inspired by nature, the watercolor-like temporary tattoos are unique. They follow the new trend of artistic temporary tattoos, which mimic the delicacy of watercolor paintings. Find their entire collection in their Etsy shop.

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Topic: Etsy, Illustration, Temporary Tattoos, Tattoos || by STAFF

A book crystallized in the ocean

Super Blue Blood Moon 2018

Image credit: Chris Voigt

My kind of lady

Happy birthday, Marie Curie! In 1903, Curie and her husband shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radium and polonium. She was the first woman to win this award and later, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. In 1911 she won another Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for producing radium as a pure metal and for further studies on radioactive elements. During World War I, she devoted herself to using radioactivity to help people. She set up mobile x-ray vehicles for soldiers in France, which were nicknamed petites Curies (“little Curies”). In the 1920s, radium was considered a miracle cure—you could even buy “Radium” brand butter, cigarettes, and beer. We now know that radioactivity itself causes cancer, but thanks to Curie, radiation therapy is still used today as an effective way to target cancerous tissues. Photo: Tekniska museet