This video shows Earth’s weather from August 17-26, 2009. It also shows how beautiful this planet is and how insignificant we are. It was created at a 7km resolution with NASA’s GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model.

The GEOS-5 atmospheric model was developed by NASA Goddard’s scientists. It’s based on the Earth System Modelling Framework, an open-source project “for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation and other Earth science software applications”.

To really appreciate its beauty, you can watch the 1080p high definition video at NASA. [NASA via @NASAGoddard]

Islands From Space

Martian Landscapes

[Wired Science and Big Picture]

Indeed, Earth and space-based telescopes couldn’t see it at the time, but there was, in fact, a dusty plume that got kicked up by the kamikaze LCROSS probe. Success!

That said, there’s still no word on whether or not water or aliens or cheese were present in the plume. Perhaps it was a combination of all three, and that’s the reason for NASA’s silence thus far (more seriously, NASA says results by “mid-November”).

Next time, just to be sure, I think NASA should shoot something a bit bigger into the Moon for better results. Something like, say, Richard Heene’s ego. [New Scientist]

At a bare minimum, you’re looking at an increase of $2, because the starter package has gone up to $42 (from $40). Platinum subscriptions have added $4 from $106 to $110, while Platinum HD have gone from $131 to $135. The HD add-ons ($10 for HD Sport, $10 for HD Explore and $15 for both) have been consolidated into one package called HD, which is $16.

Aside from that though, all that’s really happened is all the packages have been renamed.

The HD package though, is slightly different for your $16, you get the HD channels that correlate with the other packages you subscribe to. So if you’re on basic, you’ll just get Discovery HD, Fox8 HD and National Geographic HD. If you also subscribe to the Sports channels, you’ll get the HD sports channels as well. Although it would reach a point fairly quickly when you’d just be better off with the Platinum HD package, I’m sure.

Finally, Foxtel have added some new iQ and iQ2 packages. Starting at $72 with an iQ (not iQ2) and ranging up to the $135 HD Platinum pack with an iQ2, each package offers a selection of channel packages and a DVR.

You can check out all the new package details here.

The Mojave, California based company is planning to start sending NEPTUNE 30 rockets into low-earth orbit, and they’ll sell you a spot on board for a relatively cheap price. Here’s CEO Randa Milliron on how this works:

The scenario goes like this: the builder pays IOS $US8000 for the kit/launch combo, builds the kit, sends IOS the completed satellite for testing, inspection, and integration into the NEPTUNE 30 rocket. It is then launched. Lift off is not via your very colorful description of candles or hot air, but with four pillars of fire generating 40,000 pounds of thrust. It launches into a circular 310km polar low-earth-orbit (LEO) from the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga.

When a person buys a kit, ideally he or she has an experiment, task, performance, or other use in mind for the satellite. It’s really for people with a good set of electronics and programming skills, or for those who want to learn and prove their skills in the field. It can be used as a team building exercise or a solitary triumph. It’s the ultimate educational tool that allows the user to do real space-based orbital science at what are (comparatively) dollar store prices. Somehow, the bragging rights of being able to say, “I just sent my first satellite to space and it said hello to me!” are a far better return on investment than most other purchase options.

Sounds interesting! Whether or not this will all actually, you know, happen, remains to be seen. [H+ Magazine via Boing Boing]

The 33 centimetre Travelling Wave Tube Amplifier is the first high data rate K-band transmitter on a NASA spacecraft. It’s on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is sending massive amounts of data, from images of its surface—like the first photos of the Apollo sites in 40 years—to 3D data points which are being processed into the most detailed topographical map of our satellite. [NASA]

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson managed to track down Foxtel’s Patrick Delany, and he confessed that the Pay TV company would be adding 20 SD and 10 HD channels to their service by the end of the year.

The launch of the channels will coincide with an overhaul of their EPG, while the company is also planning on offering over 400 hours of catch-up TV that you can download and watch on a PC as part of your package.

There’s no announcement on what the new channels will actually be yet, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Things are looking pretty exciting for Foxtel customers over the last half of this year though…

[Courier Mail]