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Yes, I do not trust cell phone manufactures who tell us that cellphones are perfectly safe, and that we should not worry about the radiation the phones give off. I waited for years before I got a cell phone. With the nearly disappearance of street phone booths and boxes, having a cellphone has become a necessity.Of course when I use a cellphone, I use an earplug with a long cord,  and I hold the phone as far from my body as possible. I only take the phone with me when I have to be near a phone.Yesterday, Tuesday, San Francisco adopted a city ordinance requiring retailers to post the radiation levels of mobile phones. This city with progressive leaders is the first U.S. jurisdiction to respond to increased consumers concerns over the link between cellphone use and cancer. Several European countries are already warning cellphones users of the risks those cellphones pose for long-term users and children.Kudos for San Francisco.

Voyager 2 was launched

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by NASA and JPL in 1977. Its mission then was to study Saturn, and to engage flybys of the outer gas planets along the way. The planets were aligned in a fashion that only happens in a 176 year cycle. Voyager 2 accomplished its mission flawlessly, sending back data and thousands of images. It then continued merrily on its way, headed out past the solar system, going where, well, no one we know has ever been before. Now, 33 years later, Voyager 2 is still headed out, about to leave the solar system. It’s about 8.6 billion miles away now, and passing through the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble generated by the sun that surrounds our solar system. But in May, Voyager 2 inexplicably stopped talking. Engineers set the Voyager 2 craft to “engineering” mode, a debugging mode, that essentially tells Voyager to send only the most basic status updates, while they tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually, they decided that for whatever reason, one bit had “flipped,” so that a 0 was a 1,. On the 19th of May, engineers sent the command to reset, and by May 22, Voyager 2 was communicating normally.

For months now the world has been told to expect  bad space weather “that could generate unexpected currents in electricity distribution grids, that could lead to blackouts and damage to valuable infrastructure, with potentially high cost to the global economy.”Last week, the US media reported NASA’s warning of a possible once in a generation space storm that could zonk out our electricity and electronics. This morning, I saw the British ITN news video, reporting the NASA warning, this warning said that “Britain could face widespread power blackouts after the earth is hit by a once in a generation space storm!”Is the news later in Britain, or is Britain favored for an extra warning, or are the folks at ITN trying to scare the British people? The morning British tabloids are echoing the warning. Sometime in 2012 to the beginning of 2013, the papers are predicting the solar super storm to strike. So, therefore the people living in Britain should hold off on buying expensive computers, cell-phones and electronics until after 2013? Right?

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Those bad old solar winds can blow out our electric lights! Oh, my!CBS News reported today that solar storms may knock out our power grids, satellites, cell phone signals, and that we should take note and be prepared. NASA says the sun is going through a period of increased solar activity, creating intense sun storms, that could take down our technology. Take down? Put it out of commission. Scientists are working on a way to protect our electronic devices. See video.This is kind of scary and kind of funny. Can you imagine what we would do without our electronics? No computers. No TV. No ATM machines. No movies. No recorded music. How could any of us possibly manage? What would we do for entertainment? The scientist in the video speculates, if we don’t properly protect our electronic devices from the electromagnetic surges produced by powerful solar flares, we could be set back one hundred years. 100 years! Imagine, we would have to learn how to clean up behind horses.

One of the things of the many  that NASA does well, and perhaps it is one of the most important things that NASA does,  is to provide us earthbound land lubbers beautiful pictures, images and video of outer space, of  the sights around our world, and of the sights around worlds and stars beyond ours.  The pictures are better than science fiction, because they are real, and often times they are much better than what we can imagine.This morning , Sunday, May 16th, the Space shuttle Atlantis, on its final voyage, arrived and  docked, at the International Space Station.  NASA provided the video feed. See the video. These images  are just the latest eye candy from our space uncles and aunts at NASA. The Atlantis and its crew of six are expected to stay at the station for a week long visit, and feed us more of this wonderful eye candy.

Yeah. Yawn. An era will be soon coming to an end.  The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off today. Okay. Is on its way to orbit for the last time. Yeah.  Atlantis and an experienced crew of six blasted off  this afternoon, Friday, May 14th. Yeah. The shuttle is bound for the International Space Station. And?  It should reach the orbiting complex Sunday. So what? Routine, right?Today is the start of Atlantis’s final planned mission. The Atlantis will be processed for use as an emergency rescue vehicle to support NASA’s final planned shuttle flight late this year or early next. Then the shuttle fleet will be retired. Okay. “A camera mounted on the shuttle’s external tank provided dramatic views of the climb to space.” Yeah. “Strapped in on Atlantis’s flight deck were Capt. Kenneth T. Ham of the Navy, the commander; Cmdr. Dominic A. Antonelli, also of the Navy, the pilot; the flight engineer, Michael T. Good, a retired Air Force colonel; and Garrett E. Reisman, veteran of a three-month stay aboard the space station in 2008. Seated on the shuttle’s lower deck were Capt. Stephen G. Bowen of the Navy, a former submariner, and Piers J. Sellers …” Sure. Yawn!

Yesterday, the New York Times. reports that the National Research Council,, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences,  issued a report on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,.  ten  research laboratories, and concluded that the labs were merely ‘marginally adequate.’ The NRC reports warned that the decline of basic research at the NASA facilities, and the underfunding of  research, jeopardizes the agency’s ability to study and to explore the cosmos.  Joseph B. Reagan of NRC  told the Times. that if NASA continued as it is “going at the current rate, in five years the research community would not be able to support NASA’s long-term goals.” Mr. Reagan said that NASA “could easily restore the balance between basic research,” which receives $500 million of the agency’s $18 billion annual budget.”Well, NASA is a work project for high tech workers, and the NASA budget is spent to maintain as many of those high tech jobs as possible. NASA has facilities or contractors, across the country, in hundreds of Congressional voting districts. Maintaining those jobs, and thus Congressional support seems more important to NASA managers than funding scientific research.

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On the net this morning , May 6, 2010, are new and interesting pictures from the Herschel space telescope. The Herschel  was launched one year ago, to make it possible for scientists and for us lay people to learn more than ever about stars and about the formation of stars, so to provide a clue to what may have happened when our sun and the planets of our solar system were formed almost five-billion years ago.The Herschel Space Telescope is also equipped with measuring instruments, designed to search for and to detect the presence of water in outer space. Water is essential for the development of life. The Herschel has found  large quantities of water in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is providing a large amount of data on star formation. Not only is it a provider of scientific data and beautiful images of the world beyond ours, it is another of our eyes on distant space.

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Astrobiology is making headlines in space this week. The origins of life on earth, formerly a bone dry planet, have been credited in part to icy hydrogen and organic molecule bearing comets slamming into earth, thus creating Earth’s oceans and sparking aquatic life. A new discovery of huge quantities of ice evident on a 100 mile wide asteroid named 24 Themis, circulating within our solar system, changes that hypothesis. While comets come from the far nether-regions of outer space, asteroids- also known as planetoids due to their large size, come from our inner solar system and may prove to contain a cocktail of hydrogen and prebiotic molecules more in sync with our oceans. Previously, asteroids were thought to be dry chunks of rock aimlessly soaring around but, now we may discover that they are the precursors of life on our planet, delivering huge amounts of water, amino acids, gases, and organic compounds. Studies done by the Japanese, simulating the force of a meteorite into the planet, demonstrate that the force of their landing actually creates additional carbon based molecules induced by a chemical bond as a result of the impact. Thus, not only delivering the basic ingredients of life but, also creating the spark by which they were united. Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency is having a big month. After five long years and at least as many malfunctions, Hayabusa has returned, expecting to bear samples of the asteroid Itokawa. Results of their findings are eagerly awaited, especially in light of the recent discovery pertaining to 24 Themis. The small capsule will hopefully bear asteroid dust but, because Hayabusa was unable to employ all of its little tricks on the asteroid during its mere 30 minute visit and 5 year roundtrip, the chances are 50/50…. er, 40/60.President Obama’s proposed plan for NASA space exploration include astronauts landing on an asteroid and taking samples as a precursor for landing on Mars. Mars, formerly a wet planet with a magnetic field is a hot spot for finding life forms, past and present. Astrobiologists at NASA have been using Phoenix, a robotic lander launched in 2009 to study Martian water. Atmospheric samples will be taken by MAVEN, an orbiter launching in 2011. Long term plans to collect soil and rock samples and ultimately, search for life forms on Mars are in place with an aura of fervor surrounding them. NASA orbiters, landers, and robotic scouts are destined for Mars over the next two decades putting astrobiology on the fore and making Mars a very hot topic. A recent discovery of vast stores of ice on the moon is also making waves. The water would ideally become a source of drinking water for astronauts and also used to make fuel. A radar used to scan for water, brought back positive feedback of tons of ice deposits on the moon, lining the deep craters on the moon’s dark side. This news comes on the heels of the LCROSS rocket shot into a 60 mile wide crater at 5,600 miles per hour, which struck pay-dirt with a 26 gallon sample, in late 2009. A French telescope has just discovered an earth-like planet approximately 1,500 light years away. It has beamed back conclusive evidence that the Jupiter sized exoplanet is orbiting a star at a respectable enough distance, meaning the surface temperature is within the zone of being habitable. The planet has been named Corot-9b and its star is called Corot-9, both living in the Serpens solar system. This is the first earth-like giant exoplanet ever discovered.Space exploration is advancing by leaps and bounds and the next two decades are sure to turn up discoveries that will forever change our views of life on earth. President Obama wants to retire the shuttle in favor of an armory of rockets known as Ares, which will lift off with the help of Russian aerospace and privately owned companies. Destined for Mars, the Moon, and beyond- space travel will become more frequent and commonplace, attracting space tourists, as we are already beginning to witness, even now. With probes seeking life light years from here and robots reaching out to every planet in our solar system…. I wonder what will we find? Only the future will tell and these days, the future isn’t so distant.

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This  afternoon, the Internet is buzzing with feedback from Professor Stephen Hawking’s interview with The Times of London about his new series for the Discovery Channel, that will begin this May, and that looks at the certainty of intelligent alien life, and how the discovery of and the visitation by space aliens  could effect us humans.Professor Hawking says that he believes space aliens exist, and he warns us that contact with space aliens might not go so well for the human race. Mainly, because we are not as smart as a lot of us think we are. We don’t have the science and the technology to withstand a military challenge from an advance species, and if we are smart, we will keep our heads tucked in, and hope that no aliens will come calling, and we should quit trying to contact them. The good professor reasons, that, if aliens think and act anything like us, we could be like the American Indians to Columbus, enslaved by higher technology and exploited by a stronger armed force. Following his reasoning, it seems as if he is suggesting that, we had better go space silent, until some time in the future, when we are able to compete. His reasoning is a good case for stepping up our research and spending on improving our technology.