NASA's veteran Mars rover driving to new spot

This image provided by NASA shows a panoramic view from NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity of "Solander Point." The space agency said Friday June 7, 2013, the six-wheel, solar-powered rover is driving to a new spot in Endeavour Crater after spending 20 months at a site brimming with evidence of water-altered rocks. Opportunity began the trip to its next destination, Solander Point, several weeks ago so that it can be in place well before the next Martian winter. (AP Photo/NASA)

This image provided by NASA shows a panoramic view from NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity of "Solander Point." The space agency said Friday June 7, 2013, the six-wheel, solar-powered rover is driving to a new spot in Endeavour Crater after spending 20 months at a site brimming with evidence of water-altered rocks. Opportunity began the trip to its next destination, Solander Point, several weeks ago so that it can be in place well before the next Martian winter. (AP Photo/NASA)

This image provided by NASA shows a rock that the NASA Mars rover Opportunity recently examined. The six-wheel, solar-powered rover is leaving its current location in Endeavour Crater and headed for a new spot ahead of the next Martian winter. (AP Photo/NASA)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? NASA's Opportunity rover is rolling across the Martian surface again, leaving behind a clay-rich rock in search of more discoveries.

Mission managers said Friday that the plan calls for arriving at its new destination ? 1 1/2 miles to the south ? by August so that the solar-powered rover can be in a favorable spot before the next Martian winter.

Opportunity has been exploring Endeavour Crater since 2011. It's the largest of five craters examined by the six-wheel rover so far and contains some of the oldest deposits dating back to the first billion years of Mars' history.

Before trekking off last month, Opportunity used a grinder to scrape away the top layer of a light-colored rock for a peek inside. The rock was so lumpy and covered with crud that it took the rover several tries to crack open its secrets.

Unlike other rocks that Opportunity inspected during the past nine years, the latest told a different story: It contained clay minerals, a sign that water coursed through it, and formed in an environment that might have been suitable for microbes.

Previous rock studies by Opportunity pointed to a watery past on Mars, but scientists said the water was acidic.

"This is water you can drink," said mission chief scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University.

Since landing on opposite ends of the red planet in 2004, Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have impressed scientists with their longevity. Both outlasted their original, three-month warranty.

While Opportunity continues to plow ahead, Spirit's mission came to an end when it got stuck in sand and stopped communicating in 2010.

Project manager John Callas said Opportunity showed signs of wear, but was otherwise in good health. It recently experienced a bout of amnesia with its flash memory, but Callas said it was not serious.

Opportunity is not the only Mars rover on the move. Earlier this week, NASA said its newest rover, Curiosity, will soon head to a Martian mountain.

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Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-06-07-Mars%20Rover/id-5068ae02ad3b411b82ca2e84253e4fb4

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This Is the Most Awesomerest Feature in Apple iOS 7

Redesign, schmedesign. Apple's designmeister Jony Ive can harp all he wants about harmonious grids, elegant typography and the holy essence of genius contained in Dieter Ram's underpants. But the fact is that the most oooh!-aaah! feature in his new iOS 7 is the parallax effect you can see in this animated GIF. It's like magic distilled from squeezed rainbow unicorn ponies sandwiched between glass and metal.

I know it's not as useful as the other features introduced in iOS 7 today. But it is useful: it allows to make a distinction between different layers of information, giving a sense of space that will help the user understa?ok, it's just awesome and I can't wait to use it.

Source: http://front.kinja.com/this-is-the-most-awesomerest-feature-in-apple-ios-7-512390674

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I Am So Fucking Over This Already (Balloon Juice)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Harsher sentence sought for Tunisian feminist

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) ? A lawyer says a prosecutor has appealed a sentence that a court gave to a Tunisian feminist for possessing pepper spray as not harsh enough.

Amina Sboui is a member of the Ukrainian feminist group Femen.

Known by her pseudonym Amina Tyler, she shocked Tunisia by protesting the treatment of women by posting topless photos of herself on Internet.

In May, she was arrested in the central city of Kairouan while planning another protest. She was convicted of carrying pepper spray and fined about $180 under an 1894 law against carrying "burning objects."

Defense lawyer Mokhtar Jannene said Monday that a prosecutor is demanding the maximum sentence of six months.

Sboui remains in prison while the court also considers other charges against her.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/harsher-sentence-sought-tunisian-feminist-171049745.html

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The Ryders - Part 1

Awh questions...how I loath thy. Haha okay.

1. Ryders are humans with the special gift to be able to control magic and magical creatures (so their basically wizards)
2. Ryders were mixed with the rest of society though they lived in very small villages usually.
3. Cree is a world based off of Earth. The world Cree actually came from the word "cr?" which is the word "Earth" in Irish. The difference between Cree and Earth is that most of Cree is one big landmass surrounded by smaller islands then the never ending ocean. (and you may if you want)
4. The word "Ryder" is just a different way to write the word "rider" to say that they ride with their companion around the world protecting civilizations from Diablo and his army, the Deamhain. And, if you're asking what a Ryder name can actually mean, it could mean whatever you want. Though Ryders could be described as warriors, fighters, protectors, guardians and the like.

Hope that answered your questions. ^-^ if you need anything else, just ask.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/f-7ICtaAooI/viewtopic.php

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See Jennifer Lawrence Naked, Covered in Body Paint!

The actress is feeling blue for 'X Men'! Check out other cute and candid moments from the stars

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/celebrity-twitter-pictures/1-b-229669?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acelebrity-twitter-pictures-229669

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NASA launching experiment to examine the beginnings of the universe

May 21, 2013 ? When did the first stars and galaxies form in the universe? How brightly did they burn their nuclear fuel?

Scientists will seek to gain answers to these questions with the launch of the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRIment (CIBER) on a Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket between 11 and 11:59 p.m. EDT, June 4 from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Jamie Bock, CIBER principal investigator from the California Institute of Technology, said, "The first massive stars to form in the universe produced copious ultraviolet light that ionized gas from neutral hydrogen. CIBER observes in the near infrared, as the expansion of the universe stretched the original short ultraviolet wavelengths to long near-infrared wavelengths today. CIBER investigates two telltale signatures of first star formation -- the total brightness of the sky after subtracting all foregrounds, and a distinctive pattern of spatial variations."

"The objectives of the experiment are of fundamental importance for astrophysics, to probe the process of first galaxy formation, but the measurement is also extremely difficult technically," he noted.

This will be the fourth flight for CIBER on a NASA sounding rocket. The previous launches were in 2009, 2010, and 2012 from the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. After each flight the experiment or payload was recovered for post-calibrations and re-flight.

For this flight CIBER will fly on a larger and more powerful rocket than before. This will loft CIBER to a higher altitude than those previously obtained, thus providing longer observation time for the instruments. The experiment, which will safely splash down in the Atlantic Ocean more than 400 miles off the Virginia coast, will not be recovered.

CIBER previously flew on two-stage Black Brant IX sounding rockets. Bock said, "The collection of data from the three flights allows us to compare data and rigorously test sources of potential systematic error from both the instrument and astrophysical foregrounds. We have been through the end-to-end process in analyzing our data, so we understand the benefits of going with a non-recovered Black Brant XII. We also know the performance of the instrument very well from these flights and that makes us confident going forward with this more capable but final flight."

The 70-foot tall four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will carry CIBER to an altitude of about 350 miles. According to Bock, "This flight is pioneering a new direction in the astrophysics program in that we are flying our instrument on a non-recovered Black Brant XII. The XII gives us a significantly higher trajectory, providing about 560 seconds of flight time above 250 km (155 miles) altitude, compared with 250 seconds on standard Black Brant IX flights out of White Sands."

"Our experience in the near-infrared waveband is that we see appreciable emission from the atmosphere up to 250 km. The higher trajectory allows us to do some new things that are not possible on a Black Brant IX. For example, we expect to have enough independent images of the sky to directly determine the in-flight gain of the infrared cameras, which will allow us to measure background fluctuations in single exposures. This gives us a much more direct way to compare with satellite data than the statistical combinations we have had to use to date. The higher trajectory of course comes with a price in that the payload is not recovered," he said.

CIBER is a cooperative instrument designed and built by the California Institute of Technology, University of California Irvine, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The same team is also developing an improved follow-on experiment, with more capable optics and detector arrays, that will be completed next year.

Backup launch days for this project are June 5 -- 10.

To find out more about NASA's sounding rocket missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sounding-rockets/

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/sky5GQFeHfc/130521134036.htm

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