Thanks to the UofA's HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) we get an awesome glimpse into life on Mars every week! Below is a picture of active sand dunes in the Nili Patera region:

The Endeavour space shuttle returned home last week, but we just came across an extraordinary photo gallery of pics of the shuttle docked on the International Space Station that we had to share. Via NASA:

This image of the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles, was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011 (USA time). The pictures are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut; and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.

The Endeavour space shuttle landed safely late last night after a journey of 16 days and six-and-half-million miles. It was the last flight for Endeavour as NASA winds down the shuttle program.

"The space shuttle is an amazing vehicle," said Cmdr. Mark Kelly. "It's sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy."

Cmdr. Mark Kelly and his Endeavour crew aboard the International Space Station talked with kids from Gridley Middle School on Friday night. Hosting the event is Michael Drake, who was just named principal investigator of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that the UA Lunar of Planetary Lab will be running for the next decade or so.

The shuttle crew is back aboard Endeavor and is scheduled to land early in the morning of June 1.

The UA Lunar and Planetary Lab has scored a huge win with OSIRIS-REx, an astonishing space mission that aims to drop a spacecraft onto an asteroid, gather samples and photographs, and then return home to earth. The $800 million grant is largest in UA history.

Here's the release from UA:

NASA has selected the University of Arizona to lead a sample-return mission to an asteroid. The team is led by Michael Drake, director of the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. will manage the mission for NASA. Lockheed Martin will build the spacecraft.

The OSIRIS-REx mission is budgeted for approximately $800 million, excluding the launch vehicle.

The target asteroid — named 1999 RQ36 after the year it was discovered — measures 575 meters (one-third of a mile) in diameter. 1999 RQ36 is a time capsule from the early solar system rich with organic compounds that may have seeded life on Earth.

"OSIRIS-REx will explore our past and help determine our destiny," said Drake. "It will return samples of pristine organic material that scientists think might have seeded the sterile early Earth with the building blocks that led to life. Such samples do not currently exist on Earth. OSIRIS-REx will also provide the knowledge that will guide humanity in deflecting any future asteroid that could collide with Earth, allowing humanity to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs."

The crew of the Endeavour space shuttle is busy installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 today. If you want to know how the AMS-2 goes about hunting for antimatter or dark matter through the analysis of cosmic rays, you can find details here.

Here's a bulletin from NASA:

The initial wake up call to the crew of space shuttle Endeavour was at 10:56 p.m. EDT, and the day's wake up song was uplinked about 30 minutes later because of a communications drop out. The song “Luna” by Jose Serrano was played for Mission Specialist Greg Chamitoff. The artist is a friend of his and wrote the song especially for this mission.

The fourth day of the mission will focus on the installation of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), a particle physics detector. The AMS is a 2-ton ring of powerful magnets and ultrasensitive detectors built to track, but not capture, cosmic rays in a search for various types of unusual matter. The 15,251-pound instrument will be connected to the outside of the International Space Station, tilted a bit so it will not interfere with any of the station's mechanisms and storage platforms. It will be operated remotely from Earth and should not require any attention from astronauts in orbit.

On Day 3 of its mission in space, Endeavour docks with the International Space Station. I think it's pretty cool stuff, but I like watching my Roomba dock with the charger after an hour a vacuuming the kitchen. YMMV.

The Endeavour crew recaps Day 2 aboard the space shuttle, beginning with U2's "Beautiful Day" and concluding with a weird-looking meal from pouches that float in zero gravity. Yum?

NASA brings us a report from inside the Space Shuttle Endeavour as the astronauts settle into—and float around—their low-gravity surroundings.

I would have spent more time reading this article in Mother Jones on the nature of persuasion and ideas, but I'm in the middle of a Facebook argument about something Rush Limbaugh said today.

Take, for instance, the question of whether Saddam Hussein possessed hidden weapons of mass destruction just before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. When political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler showed subjects fake newspaper articles [18] (PDF) in which this was first suggested (in a 2004 quote from President Bush) and then refuted (with the findings of the Bush-commissioned Iraq Survey Group report, which found no evidence of active WMD programs in pre-invasion Iraq), they found that conservatives were more likely than before to believe the claim. (The researchers also tested how liberals responded when shown that Bush did not actually "ban" embryonic stem-cell research. Liberals weren't particularly amenable to persuasion, either, but no backfire effect was observed.)

Another study gives some inkling of what may be going through people's minds when they resist persuasion. Northwestern University sociologist Monica Prasad [19] and her colleagues wanted to test whether they could dislodge the notion that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were secretly collaborating among those most likely to believe it—Republican partisans from highly GOP-friendly counties. So the researchers set up a study [20] (PDF) in which they discussed the topic with some of these Republicans in person. They would cite the findings of the 9/11 Commission, as well as a statement in which George W. Bush himself denied his administration had "said the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda."

One study showed that not even Bush's own words could change the minds of Bush voters who believed there was an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

As it turned out, not even Bush's own words could change the minds of these Bush voters—just 1 of the 49 partisans who originally believed the Iraq-Al Qaeda claim changed his or her mind. Far more common was resisting the correction in a variety of ways, either by coming up with counterarguments or by simply being unmovable:

Interviewer: [T]he September 11 Commission found no link between Saddam and 9/11, and this is what President Bush said. Do you have any comments on either of those?

Respondent: Well, I bet they say that the Commission didn't have any proof of it but I guess we still can have our opinions and feel that way even though they say that.