James Cameron and NASA

James Cameron will be helping NASA develope a 3-D camera for its next Mars rover. Mr. Cameron developed 3-D technology for his movie Avatar.

Prebiotic Molecules from Comet Impact

Nir Goldman, of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and his colleagues modeled the shock compression and subsequent expansion of a typical comet mixture of water, methanol, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide molecules to see what could happen if a comet were to impact a planet's surface. For shock compressions lasting about 20 picoseconds at temperatures up to 4,000 K and pressures about 60 gigapascals, the researchers observed formation of chains of carbon and nitrogen atoms, some parts of which were akin to chains of amino acids. The results show that a comet colliding with a planet could produce prebiotic chemicals from common interstellar building blocks regardless of the planetary environment.

STS-131 Mission Information

I am reading this article, STS-131 Mission Information, on NASA's website.
According to this article the members of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew for this mission to the International Space Station are:
Alan
G. Poindexter, James P. Dutton Jr., Rick Mastracchio, Stephanie D. Wilson,
Dorothy M. Metcalf-Lindenburger, Naoko Yamazaki and Clayton C. Anderson.

They are currently aboard the ISS.

Climate-change "Geoengineering"

According to a new report by the U.K. House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology, which was released in the U.S. on March 18 at a House of Representatives Science & Technology Committee hearing, international regulations are needed to control the use of climate-change "geoengineering" technologies intended to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gases. The report names the U.N. as the best body to enforce these regulations.

American Chemical Society National Meeting

The American Chemical Society held its national meeting in San Francisco March 21-25. There were nearly 12,500 technical papers presented. The meeting theme was "Chemistry for a Sustainable World."

Ravencon 2010

Ravencon is this weekend. Al, Mike, Nik , and I plan to be there. It will be at the Koger Center in Richmond.

Russian-American crew prepares to blast off to ISS

I am reading this story, Russian-American
crew prepares to blast off to ISS, on Russia Today's website.
According to this article Tracy Dyson, Aleksandr Skvortsov and Mikhail Korneenko trained for this mission at Balikonur Space Center and the Soyuz Spacecraft.