In Case You Missed It: A Mystery Beneath the Ice

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Camp Century in Greenland. (NASA)

We live in a time of conspiracies, as the newspapers demonstrate everyday.

One conspiracy from the World War II era related to Hitler maintaining a secret base in Antarctica. While that story has been debunked, have you heard the one about the secret U.S. base hidden beneath the ice?

Last May, Newsweek told this story in an article titled “Map Shows US Nuclear Base Hidden Under Greenland’s Ice Since Cold War.” It discusses a NASA “discovery” last year during the test of new radar equipment – the (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) – to peer beneath the ice.

The NASA team rediscovered Camp Century, a secret U.S. base constructed in the late 1950s during the Cold War. The U.S. was testing the idea of building nuclear-missile launch sites beneath the ice. The effort proved fruitless, causing the abandonment of the secret base in 1967.

While Greenland is again on the tip of many tongues, the idea of joint military operations between the U.S. and Greenland is nothing new. The U.S. signed a treaty with Denmark back in 1951 that permitted U.S. military facilities throughout Greenland. The story notes that the U.S. has as many as 17 military bases in Greenland hosting close to 10,000 troops. Today, the U.S. has only one military base left with about 150 Air Force personnel.

Camp Century is not really a big secret today, and you can find many articles about it over the years, but it was an interesting discovery for NASA, and proved the value of the new radar equipment.

Maybe NASA needs to make a pass over Antarctica next just to put to rest any remaining rumors about that Nazi base. Better yet, we can check out some sites on the Moon to be certain the Nazis did not build a base there as well.

Note: This Newsweek story was originally reported in The Wall Street Journal, but the newspaper’s firewall would have prevented many from reading the story. You can find another good summary of NASA’s Camp Century encounter in this Smithsonian magazine article.

In Case You Missed It: Experiencing Disney’s Star Wars Hotel

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Drinks at the Disney Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. (Disney)

The Disney hotel lasted for less than two years, but for more than four hours you can experience it on YouTube.

Opened in March 2022, Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was an expensive, all-inclusive hotel that brought Star Wars adventures directly to the well-heeled. By September 2023, the fun was over when Disney shuttered the hotel forever after failing to attract enough customers.

The YouTube video, The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel, follows Jenny Nicholson, who paid $6,000 for a two-night stay at the hotel. You get to see the experience for yourself and get deep into the highs and lows of her adventure.

Since most of us either lacked the funds or chutzpah to check into this hotel, this is the next best thing. You may never see such an adventure again. Of course, maybe the Alien franchise will see something to build on. After all, that series is all about the gullible checking in but not checking out.

In Case You Missed It: One Way to Get Kids into Planetariums

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Taylor Swift light show at the Saint Louis Science Center. (Saint Louis Science Center)

It may be an unusual way to encourage children to visit a planetarium, but it seems to be working. Taylor Swift light shows appear to be the new rage at planetariums across the country.

The image above comes from the light show at the Saint Louis planetarium, though you can find similar shows at planetariums in Springfield, Massachusetts, Laramie, Wyoming, and Boulder, Colorado.

I suppose this is a way to introduce some kids to the existence of the planetarium while also paying the overhead for the planetarium itself. It would be nice to learn whether the same crowd comes back later to learn more about the solar system and universe, though I have not seen much press on that relationship.

One can only hope that the real stars eventually outshine the Earth-bound ones for some of these children. Maybe the visit will even lead to more interest in the planets, such as Saturn. After all, didn’t Taylor sing about that planet in her song Seven?

Sweet tea in the summer
Cross your heart, won’t tell no other
And though I can’t recall your face
I still got love for you
Your braids like a pattern
Love you to the moon and to Saturn
Passed down like folk songs
The love lasts so long

In Case You Missed It/Video: The Stakes Are High with Our Return to the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Moving the Artemis I mission into place. (NASA)

With the recent glitches related to the two commercial Moon missions, an earlier NASA video on the Artemis program became all too relevant. In the video, “Farther and Faster: NASA’s Journey to the Moon with Artemis,” we hear that the stakes are high as we attempt to return to the Moon, and how we could be the generation that loses the Moon if we don’t get it right.

In addition to the risks, the video also highlights the great successes already with the Artemis I mission, as you may recall from back in 2022:

Over the course of 25.5 days, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles (129 kilometers) of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles (435,000 kilometers) from our home planet. On Dec. 11, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully completed a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 9:40 a.m. PST (12:40 p.m. EST) as the final major milestone of the Artemis I mission.

Artemis I set new performance records, exceeded efficiency expectations, and established new safety baselines for humans in deep space. This is a prelude to what comes next—following the success of Artemis I, human beings will fly around the Moon on Artemis II.

It is worth pondering what we have ahead of us. NASA may be having a few issues with its commercial partners, but the main mission has done well. We cannot be discouraged with a few delays as long as we keep the course. We have done it before and there is no reason we cannot do it again. I say slow and steady.

Mars is the goal, but we need to prove ourselves with the Moon. Check out the video and determine for yourself if we have already made a fair amount of progress.

In Case You Missed It/Video: Missed Opportunity on Exomoons

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Assistant Professor of Astronomy David Kipping sharing his story of rejection. By the way, the image behind him is the exomoon Pandora from the movie Avatar. (Cool Worlds Lab)

A few months back, Assistant Professor of Astronomy David Kipping shared a short video regarding his organization’s failure to secure James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) time to search for exomoons that he knows are there. His organization, Cool Worlds Lab, has done some amazing work studying and publicizing issues related to astronomy. You should visit his site for some challenging topics.

What is unique about his video is that it was recorded only one hour after he learned that his organization would not be able to use JWST for his exomoon search and he wanted to share what rejection felt like “in real time.” He goes on to say that such rejection is part of science, as brutal as it may feel at the moment, noting that for every seven JWST proposals, only one will be approved.

Fortunately, we have scientists out there with very thick skin sharing new ideas and proposals. And Dr. Kipping will not be giving up on his exomoon push anytime soon. That is good news for all of us.