Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor (left) is making history this week. He is the first Malaysian astronaut, or angkasawan. Shukor will be aboard the International Space Station until October 21st. He will be performing four scientific experiments studying the effects of microgravity and radiation on cells and microbes.
The fledgling Malaysian Angkasawan program began in October 2003 to promote interest in space and technology and to be a source of Malaysian national pride. Malaysia struck a deal with Russia to bear the costs of training two astronauts, a primary and a backup candidate, as an offset from the purchase of Russia fighter jets for the Malaysian air force.
The Malaysian National Space Agency was officially established in 2002 with the mission of supporting "the development of the new economy, generate knowledge, and strengthen national security infrastructure."
Muslims in Space
Dr. Shukor also made history as he was the first Muslim to be in space during Ramadan, an important Islamic observance of fasting and prayer. The Malaysian government convened a panel of Islamic scholars and scientists to publish a guidebook for performing Islamic rituals while in space.
While the first Malaysian, Dr. Shukor is not the first Muslim to be in space. That honor went to Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman in 1985, early during the NASA space shuttle program. Prince Sultan flew on mission STS-51-G which deployed 3 satellites.
In my humble opinion, the most inspiring and historic Muslim in space for people all around the world should be the Iranian-born American astronaut (or space flight participant) on Expedition 13, Anousheh Ansari. Ansari did not have a nation's budget backing her space flight experience like Dr. Shukor, nor was a Saudi royal like Prince Sultan -- instead, she earned her 20+ million dollar space flight American dream the old-fashioned, entrepreneurial way -- by earning it dollar by dollar, running a business.
down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There's only a twenty percent chance that inclement weather could postpone the scheduled 7:38 pm launch of the shuttle Atlantis this evening. The STS-117 mission has already had some disappointing setbacks in its original schedule. Back in February, after the shuttle had been rolled out to the launch pad, a freak hail storm severely damaged the insulating foam on the external tank. It was the same storm system that spawned multiple tornadoes in my area. NASA workers labored around the clock over the last few months to repair that damage and get Atlantis ready for launch today. NASA TV coverage begins at 1:30 pm.
The crew of STS-117 consists of: Expedition 15/16 Flight Engineer Clayton C. Anderson, mission specialists James Reilly II, Steven Swanson, Commander Frederick Sturckow, Pilot Lee Archambault and mission specialists Patrick Forrester and John D. Olivas. Clayton Anderson will stay onboard the International Space Station and Sunita Williams will return home on Atlantis when the mission is completed.
The mission of STS-117 is similar to the previous missions to the International Space Station. STS-117 will be delivering and attaching an additional structural component to the ISS, designated as the S3/S4 truss. They will also be installing an additional set of power-generating solar arrays which proved to be a tricky situation on the last mission. All of the construction work is done over the course of the mission through several Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs) or spacewalks. Why we still call EVAs spacewalks until we go back to the moon is something I wonder about occasionally. I'm going to head outside and try to catch a glimpse of the launch this evening.
I don't buy the zero-sum-gain argument that we all have to become poor to allow everyone on our pathetic spinning ball of mud to lead a tolerable life. I think I believe in the equilibrium of science and the wonder of Spinoza's god. In order to begin to ponder this, one has to step back from current events in a thought experiment, using your imagination, and then look at the whole of the forseeable space-time continuum for mankind according to one's own ability to do that kind of experiment within one's own mind. Our daily lives are quantum events. Shit happens. Opportunity knocks. Now zoom in or out to analyze a set of past events or a future scenario. Or, be Zen and analyze the moment in which you find yourself. Once you complete that thought experiment, begin widening your lense of imagination to contemplate the fate of your species, your fellow man (and woman), living on this planet. That photo is 13 years old, now. I doubt the child survived another day. Hello? Save Darfur? Global Warming?
While I don't use the nickname "Jabba the Godless," I can totally support Gloria saying she is a huge atheist. I certainly love my frelling neighbor more than some faux-victorian, SUV-driving, upwardly-mobile, Soccer Mom that is bathing herself in Christian righteousness and ignorance within that petty peer group because she's frantically betting that she won't be dumped for the babysitter once the kids leave home. Good luck, Monica.
"To thine own self, be true." That's why Melicious is my best friend. She's painted that phrase, somewhere, in just about every place she's ever lived to remind herself and everyone that may read it of the wisdom of that first bumper sticker for a English horse carriage.
So, here's my idea. I think one of the reasons the world is not coming together to fix global warming is because some of us talk about degrees fahrenheit and some of us talk about degrees celcius. Rather than strut back and forth, as experts, why not just make it cool to talk about the weather in degrees Kelvin? Yeah, see? No win-lose, but a third way! So ... in my quantum day's weather, it's 89 F and 32 C and 305 K. Yeah! Let's all use degrees Kelvin! "It's so friggin' hot today!" "Yeah?" "It's 305." "I'm so hitting the swimming pool!" Let's stop talking apples and oranges for fun TV weather and earth sciences. Instead, let's talk about species death, like the child in the photo. That photo is a quantum glimpse into our future, if we just "stay the course."
Space Shuttle Atlantis as seen from the International Space Station before docking procedures at the start of the STS-117 mission. (Click here for hi-res NASA photo)
Wow. The space shuttle Atlantis finally landed at Edwards AFB in California on Friday afternoon, after bad weather prevented multiple landing opportunities at Kennedy in Florida.
What an amazing mission STS-117 turned out to be. From the beginning, the thousands of engineers and technicians in NASA and the RSA had to overcome so many obstacles to make the mission the success it is.
Back in February, Atlantis rolled out to launch pad only to have its external tank damaged by a freak hail storm. NASA worked around the clock to repair that damage to get the shuttle ready for the June 8th launch.
Even before that incident, the Columbia accident had caused such a delay that some of the components you see in the Atlantis cargo bay in the photo above had to refurbished before launch.
While at the International Space Station, the main computers from the Russian section inexplicably shut down. It turned out that power circuits may have been overly sensitive to power fluctuations. The Russians worked their butt off to fix that critical incident in a timely manner.
Through all these trials and tribulations, people worked together to complete the mission. That's a great testament to what people can do when their mission is clearly defined and they then cooperate with a shared sense of purpose.
Our Blogdrivin' friend, Tigerrr, has a great pair of before and after photos of the International Space Station that shows just what construction was accomplished by the STS-117 mission. Check out the NASA image gallery for more inspiring photos.
Once Atlantis STS-117 landed yesterday, it also marked the end of the historic tour of duty on the space station for Expedition 14 crew member, Sunita Williams. "Sunny" broke the record for most time in space by a female astronaut. If you need a positive role model for young girls to counter-balance the influence of the Spears, Lohan, and Hilton types, I humbly suggest you do some research about the life of Sunny Williams and other female astronauts and teach those things to your daughters.
I spent some part of my Sunday watching the on-demand video clips of the Live Earth concert held in New York Giants stadium. They were many impressive moments. Below, I've made up my own chronological playlist of the event because my musical tastes vary and sometimes I just want to go directly to a video clip.
On the left side of the playlist is the latest media by the artist. When you mouse-over the artist name or CD cover art, you'll get a preview of it. You can then go to Amazon to get more details or purchase the CD.
On the right side of my playlist, I've linked all the videos clips of the Live Earth concert hosted in New York Giants stadium. Click on any title to view that video clip. It will open in a new window at MSN and subsequent songs will be also queued up to play.
The two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been exploring the red planet for the last three-and-a-half years. They were originally designed and engineered to only survive a ninety day mission. This upcoming Saturday, NASA has planned to launch a third Mars rover named Phoenix from Patrick AFB in Florida. The Phoenix spacecraft is currently sitting atop a Boeing Delta II rocket. After the Phoenix launches at 5:26-6:03 a.m, it will make the ten-month-long journey, and then land in the north polar ice cap region of Mars on May 25th, 2008.
The main reason to explore the polar region is to see if life could, does, or did exist below the surface hidden from the harsh Martian conditions. The basic science with this mission is a major motivation for embarking upon it.
First of all, it is rocket science. Launching a spacecraft to another planet and landing it there is an amazing feat of engineering technology that incorporates just about every major engineering discipline.
Secondly, burrowing under the Martian permafrost and looking for forms of life brings geological, chemical and biological scientific disciplines to the mission. For example, simply discovering traces of methane in a soil sample doesn't necessarily mean that the methane was produced by biological processes since methane can be trapped there from geological processes.
If the Mars exploration missions interest you, here are my suggested links:
Early this morning around 5:00am, I cautiously walked through the pre-dawn darkened neighborhood and out into the middle of the nearby golf course. I've always been interested in astronomy, but I've never taken the time to learn very much about it or try any stargazing. In other words, I think it's cool, but I'm completely ignorant.
When I heard the news about the Perseid meteor shower being very visible because of the darkness of a new moon, I thought I should check it out. I didn't need a telescope, I didn't have to know very much about astronomy to see the phenomena. While I only hung out for about 30 minutes, it was pretty cool to watch.
The other cool thing about the meteor shower is that everyone everywhere can see it. Any idiot, even you, should be able to follow these instructions.
1. Tonight, go somewhere as dark and unlit as you can find outside. 2. Face North. 3. Raise up your right arm to your right side. That's East. 4. Now, turn yourself about halfway in between. That's North East. 5. Look up.
Now, I just stood there in the dark watching the half dozen shooting stars that I could see and then grew tired and walked home. I've read some things on the web since then and I'm going to bring a chair with me tonight. Hopefully, the weather will co-operate and keep the clouds away.
I learned a few other things about meteor showers. Basically, the Earth passes through the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle every year about this time. The icy debris in the comet's tail hits our atmosphere at speeds up to 130,000 mph, burns up, and appears as a shooting star.
The weird visual phenomena in a meteor shower is very similar to driving a car during a snow storm. The snow flakes appear to come at your car's windshield from the center of the road directly in front of you, even though they're falling from above.
NASA has made the call to bring space shuttle Endeavor home because of the looming danger to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the mission control personnel in Houston, Texas, from Hurricane Dean. Yesterday, the STS-118 crew finished up their final tasks and undocked from the International Space Station (ISS).
Hurricane Dean is a very destructive category 4 hurricane predicted to eventually hit the northern states of Mexico and the southern Texas region. I'm continually finding new things at the NASA web sites. Today, I found NASA has a hurricane page.
On Friday, two astronauts were outside on an EVA (space walk) working when the ISS orbitted over Hurricane Dean. Now, I've been watching EVA live streams for some time, so I'm fairly used to hearing people talk over each other and also hearing the strange noises that accompany a live video feed from space.
Here are links to the short video of that event (WMP) (RM). Listen to the comments of the two astronauts who are extremely focussed on their EVA tasks, but then take a moment as they look down at the Earth and hurricane Dean churning below.
According to the National Hurricane Center, hurricane Dean will continue to strengthen before hitting the northern coast of Belize and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in the next 24 hours.
There will be a total lunar eclipse tonight (early Tuesday morning). Set your alarm clock, if you have to do it. There really aren't that many total lunar eclipses during one's lifetime. Sure solar eclipses can be all weird and scary, if you don't know what is happening, but lunar eclipses shouldn't be ignored just because you own a playstation or television. If you have children, I think it would be worth it to wake up the kids and let them watch it. They have all day in school to sleep anyway.
People living in western North America and eastern Australia will have the best viewing opportunity of this eclipse. People living in Europe and Africa will be out of luck. Although, with a global internet, one could watch the eclipse via webcast.
Basically, if you are in an area covered by the darkest orbital bell curve above, you'll be able to see the entire lunar eclipse. For people living in the western United States, the lunar eclipse begins at 01:51 PDT early Tuesday morning and ends at 05:24 PDT. I made the above image by modifying this NASA image by Fred Espenak. The next lunar eclipse in 2008 will favor the eastern U.S, Europe and Africa.
I found a comprehensive entry with great Burning Man links at one of the blogs I regularly read, Laughing Squid. I'm feeling lazy tonight and don't really enjoy re-blogging into the digital echo chamber, so I urge you to go there for ongoing Burning Man information. Also, Scott Beale reports that the fire was arson.
If you don't click that arson link, you'll never forgive yourself for missing the weirdest police mugshot since Texas politician Tom Delay got arrested for something ... being a pompous, grinning asshole, I think.
The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales has resigned. How do I feel about that? I'm not sure. I thought his inability to lie well at congressional hearings was actually fairly entertaining to watch. He is just one of many psychologically dysfunctional men in power from Bushworld that should be in prison.
President Bush continued insulting our intelligence in a speech at the American Legion convention. This time, his speech writers were wise enough to drop the idiotic historical Vietnam references. These speeches are just public relations bullshit gearing up for the Congressional fight when the House and Senate return to Washington.
While I like the slogan, "strategic patience," the neocons are still using the phrase "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." President Bush is still drumming up support for war with Iran with patriotic proganda slogans and unbelievably quoting the AIPAC Senator Joe Lieberman. Oy vey!
Hello, my name is NAZ.I have few friends, but the ones i have mean alot to me.Im not a huge fan of people in general.I hate people who think they are somehow better than others. I'm 25 years old and residing in Kelana Jaya, Ga. I've been on myblog since Nov 2007 and I believe it is a great tool to interact with others all around the world. i will NOT make you a layout of any kind unless you plan on paying me!. i don't have time to make layouts on myspace. so if you're cheap, don't even bother asking me.hahaha, peace!
I'm mainly a fan of drama and horror films. A few favorites include Requiem for a Dream, Donnie Darko, Ash Wednesday, The Virgin Suicides, and V for Vendetta.
I enjoy almost every style of rock music. If I listed all the bands this profile would stretch out for days so here are the genres: hardcore, metal, classic rock, emo, indie, ambient, alternative, and progressive.
