Saturday, June 19, 2010

Global Seed Vault: National Geographic Explores The Arctic Facility (VIDEO)



Take a look inside the global seed vault in this clip from National Geographic's upcoming 3-night special, "How The Earth Changed History".
The seed vault, built to protect the world's food supply in the event of a global crisis, is located on a remote Norwegian island in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago. It was built high enough to avoid rising sea levels, and deep enough into the mountain to be able to withstand a nuclear explosion. The vault is kept at a constant temperature of zero degrees to preserve its contents.
"How The Earth Changed History" premieres Sunday, June 20.

IKAROS


More IKAROS views
Some more pictures with and info about the cameras released to view the Japanese IKAROS solar sail from a distance:
/-- See the solar sail in space - Cosmic Log - June.17.10
/-- Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator 'IKAROS' Successful Image Shooting by Separation Camera - JAXA - June.17.10

Haven't seen an estimate yet as to when they will be able to measure an acceleration with the sail. It's a fairly small sail so I suspect it could be quite awhile.

A nice sequence of pictures from the free floating cameras start at about 1 minute into this video