NASA
scientificactivist | March 21, 2007Last week I mentioned an upcoming hearing by the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to "Examine Allegations of Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science." The hearing happened on Monday (19 March), and it even got a bit of media coverage in the process.
The testimony of the witnesses can be downloaded here. I reported last week that a video would also be available on the site (as this is what I was told by the person who informed me about the hearing), and looking at past hearings, this seems to be the standard policy. Since no video has yet been…
scientificactivist | March 14, 2007(See update here.)
The Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform--chaired by Henry Waxman--will hold part two of its "Hearing to Examine Allegations of Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science" on Monday, 19 March, at 10:00 am EST. The full witness list is supposed to be made available later today (Update: It looks like the list isn't going to be posted today, but hopefully it will be sometime soon). To see it (once it's posted), and to watch the video of the hearing (once the hearing has begun), go to the committee's schedule page.
The witness list…
scientificactivist | January 11, 2007Oh boy, it just never stops with this administration and its contempt for science. Via Keith Cowing's NASA Watch comes news of a, well, interesting new Bush Administration appointee at NASA:
NASA Headquarters has a new political appointee in its employ: Patrick Rhode. He'll be working on the 9th floor.
For those of you who followed the post-Katrina management fiasco at FEMA you may recall hearing his name. Rhode served as FEMA Director Michael Brown's Chief of Staff and later, as Acting Deputy Director of FEMA. I am sure the folks at Stennis and Michoud will be thrilled to learn this.…
scientificactivist | August 16, 2006According to the AP, NASA announced Tuesday that it was beginning an official search for the missing tapes from the Apollo missions.
Red-faced because the best pictures of its glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the historic Apollo moon missions.
What's missing are the never-before-broadcast, clear, original videos - not the grainy, converted pictures the world watched on television more than three decades ago.
The tapes aren't lost, says the NASA official in charge of the search. But he doesn't know where they…
scientificactivist | August 14, 2006Yes, that's right. The moon landing may have been one of the most significant events of the Twentieth Century, but our original records of it seem to have been misplaced, as The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 5th of August:
The heart-stopping moments when Neil Armstrong took his first tentative steps onto another world are defining images of the 20th century: grainy, fuzzy, unforgettable.
But just 37 years after Apollo 11, it is feared the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk - beamed to the world via three tracking stations, including Parkes's famous "Dish" - have gone…
scientificactivist | June 11, 2006The Bad Astronomy Blog reports that NASA has officially admitted that censorship did in fact take place there recently. In a letter to Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT), NASA writes:
...an internal inquiry has revealed that one recent media request to interview Dr. James Hansen, of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was inappropriately declined. This action, which was contrary to NASA policy, did not spring from any change in policy or in any way change NASA's commitment to fully and transparently communicate its findings, programs, and activities to the public. In addition, several…