| NASA robot to find water on moon
WASHINGTON: NASA has demonstrated the functioning of a robot rover equipped with a drill designed to find water and oxygen-rich soil on the moon.
Exhibited during the 3rd Space Exploration Conference (Feb. 26-28) in Denver, USA, the new robot technology was a tough project for NASA.
The challenges the design team faced during the production were numerous.
First of all, a robot rover designed for prospecting within lunar craters has to operate in continual darkness at extremely cold temperatures with little power.
Secondly, the moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.
Also, lunar soil, known as regolith, is abrasive and compact, so if a drill strikes ice, it likely will have the consistency of concrete.
How creepy do you want it?
Then, something happens. In the middle of the night all nine suddenly leap out of their tents as fast as possible, ripping them open from the inside (not even enough time to untie the doors) and race out into the sub-zero temps, without coats or boots or skis, most in their underwear, some even barefoot or with a single sock or boot. It is 30 degrees below zero, Celsius. A few make it as far as a kilometer and a half down the slope. All nine, as you might expect, quickly die. And so it begins. Why did they rush out, unable to even grab a coat or blanket? What came at them? The three-month investigation revealed that five of the trekkers died from simple hypothermia, with no apparent trauma at all, no signs of attack, struggle, no outward injuries of any kind. However, two of the other four apparently suffered massive internal traumas to the chest, like you would if you were hit by a car.
Rain brings sewage into San Francisco Bay
The flood of effluent continued over the weekend when two spills in Marin County dumped thousands of gallons of sewage into San Francisco Bay and an adjoining waterway. There have been 276 sewage spills this year that either flowed into Bay Area waterways or contained at least 1,000 gallons of effluent, according to the analysis of State Water Resources Control Board statistics. That's more than 14 million gallons of sludge oozing out into the environment, the statistics show. That doesn't even include the Jan. 26 and Jan. 31 spills of 5.15 million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage by the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin treatment plant in Mill Valley. The number of spills this year far outpaces the last half of 2007, when there were 249 spills that either exceeded 1,000 gallons or entered a waterway, according to the data.
Only 3 more days ...
The group is sending a letter with this request to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, the Kootenai County Commission, and to Senator Larry Craig. The group strongly opposed the building of the refueling depot over the Rathdrum-Spokane Aquifer. Barry Rosenberg, executive director of Kootenai Environmental Alliance said that, It is not unreasonable to ask that the refueling depot cease operations until an assessment of the damage is made and the feasibility of truly safeguarding the drinking water for 400,000 people is determined. The Kootenai Environmental Alliance learned that there are at least three distinct, unprotected wastewater lines that have been operational for a year. None of these lines have any containment system. All three pipes are in areas that had heavy equipment traffic during construction phase.
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