About half a year before the robotic arm on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander began digging into soil and subsurface ice of an arctic plain of Mars, six scientists traveled to one of the coldest, driest places on Earth for soil-and-ice studies that would end up aiding analysis of the Mars data.
They used duplicates of some [...]

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During the countdown, formal weather briefings occur approximately as follows:
L-24 hr 0 min: Briefing for Flight Director and astronauts
L-21 hr 0 min: Briefing for removal of Rotating Service Structure
L-9 hr 00 min: Briefing for external tank fuel loading
L-4 hr 30 min: Briefing for Space Shuttle Launch Director
L-3 hr 55 min: Briefing for astronauts
L-2 hr [...]

Continue reading " Space Shuttle weather briefing and equipment "

For almost half a century, John Powell has monitored the weather at the same time every day for the Met Office.

By Richard Savill

Last Updated: 2:08PM BST 05 May 2009

Now the amateur weather forecaster has retired, ending a hobby that has involved recording daily on the stroke of 9am GMT since 1961.
Mr Powell, 75, has been [...]

Continue reading " Amateur weather forecaster gives up after 50 years "

By Scott Sistek
We hear it all the time when someone comes into our weather office: “So, where’s the dartboard?”
It’s actually hidden in our coat closet, but more times than not the games of cricket are just for fun and we base our forecasts off computer model projections.
But computers are never wrong, right? So [...]

Continue reading " Forecast models: Just really expensive dart boards? "