Space shuttle Discovery has finally been launched yesterday more than one week after being grounded due to a faulty sensor in the main fuel tank. This time around, after intense troubleshooting, the sensor showed no sign of malfunction and the countdown proceeded as planned.

Inspections of Discovery’s heat shield began this morning, using an infrared laser camera to detect any defect in the ceramic tiling on the bottom of the shuttle. It can detect any inconsistency larger than an eraser on the top of a pencil. If something threatening for the shuttle is discovered, it will dock to the International Space Station (ISS) and will wait for shuttle Atlantis to launch and bring some repair material or, in the worst case scenario, to bring back the Discovery astronauts to safety and jettison the damaged spaceship. Needless to say that it will take a whole lot of damage to execute this last resort plan.

During the launch, some minor damage was reported on the shuttle. Footage from one of the many cameras monitoring the launch showed minor damage to heat-protective tiles near the nose landing gear and an unexplained piece of debris falling away from the exterior fuel tank. There was also a piece of a protective tile that flew off the shuttle. The debris apparently did not strike the shuttle, but inspection is going on with extra scrutinity. NASA also told the briefing that it had noticed dents in the shuttle’s nose caused by birds that hit it during the lift-off. You can read the latest mission status report on the NASA website.

EDIT on July 27th: NASA has decided to ground all the shuttles because of the huge foam debris that detached from the main tank during the launch. We can see this on the picture to the right. All space flights are grounded indefinitely until they figure out a way to fix this dangerous problem that caused the loss of space shuttle Columbia, on February 1, 2003.

July 27th, 2005 | Physics | 2 comments

In what looks like a desperate effort to challenge Google, Microsoft lauched yesterday MSN Virtual Earth, its online mapping service. It offers similar services such as a regular map, aerial photography (somewhat limited outside of the US) and a search engine similar to Google Local that allows the user to search in terms of category (i.e. restaurants, bookstores, etc.).

The tool is pretty good, but I think it comes a couple of months too late, so a big part of the market is already using Google Maps. And knowing Microsoft, I find it unlikely that they will be releasing ways to modify their products, like it’s done at Google Maps APIs. It yielded some nice modifications such as Guild Wars GMaps, the GMap Pedometer, among others.

I find pretty comical that MSN shows a blank lot where the Apple Campus is located. You can see the MSN version and the Google Maps version. In that regard, I find it surprising that they have not censored Google’s Building yet…

The data seems to come from Microsoft Streets and Maps as some inaccuracies that were spotted in that version were present in MSN VIrtual Earth. On the right, we can see the best satellite image available over Quebec City. It’s not impressive at all.

Bottom line: Microsoft will have to work a lot harder in order to catch up Google Maps. Their product may get better, but right now, I advise you to take a look at it to see its limitations by yourself.

July 26th, 2005 | Earth Sciences and Geomatics | 2 comments