Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 28, 2013

The World Around Us

15

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 28, 2013 


“DEEP IMPACT” COMET HUNTER MISSION COMES TO AN END

 After almost 9 years in space that included an 
unprecedented July 4th impact and subsequent flyby 
of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of 
approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects, NASA’s 
Deep Impact mission has ended.

 The project team at JPL has reluctantly pronounced the 
mission at an end after being unable to communicate with 
the spacecraft for over a month. The last communication 
with the probe was Aug. 8. Deep Impact was history’s 
most traveled comet research mission, going about 4.7 
billion miles.

 “Deep Impact has been a fantastic, long-lasting 
spacecraft that has produced far more data than we had 
planned,” said Mike A’Hearn, the Deep Impact principal 
investigator at the University of Maryland in College Park. 
“It has revolutionized our understanding of comets and 
their activity.”

 Deep Impact successfully completed its original 
bold mission of six months in 2005 to investigate both 
the surface and interior composition of a comet, and a 
subsequent extended mission of another comet flyby and 
observations of planets around other stars that lasted from 
July 2007 to December 2010. Since then, the spacecraft 
has been continually used as a space-borne planetary 
observatory to capture images and other scientific data 
on several targets of opportunity with its telescopes and 
instrumentation.

 Launched in January 2005, the spacecraft first traveled 
about 268 million miles to the vicinity of comet Tempel 
1. On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor 
into the path of comet to essentially be run over by its 
nucleus on July 4. This caused material from below the 
comet’s surface to be blasted out into space where it could 
be examined by the telescopes and instrumentation of the 
flyby spacecraft. Sixteen days after that comet encounter, 
the Deep Impact team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory 
to fly back past Earth in late December 2007 to put it 
on course to encounter another comet, Hartley 2, in 
November 2010.

 “Six months after launch, this spacecraft had already 
completed its planned mission to study comet Tempel 1,” 
said Tim Larson, project manager of Deep Impact at JPL. 
“But the science team kept finding interesting things to do, and through the ingenuity of our mission team and navigators and support of NASA’s Discovery Program, this spacecraft kept it up for more than 
eight years, producing amazing results all along the way.”

 The spacecraft’s extended mission culminated in the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010. Along the way, it also observed six different stars to confirm the motion of planets orbiting them, 
and took images and data of the Earth, the Moon and Mars. These data helped to confirm the existence of water on the Moon, and attempted to confirm the methane signature in the atmosphere of Mars. 
One sequence of images is a breathtaking view of the Moon transiting across the face of Earth.

 In January 2012, Deep Impact performed imaging and accessed the composition of distant comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd). It collected early images of comet ISON in June of this year.

 After losing contact with the spacecraft last month, mission controllers spent several weeks trying to uplink commands to reactivate its onboard systems. Although the exact cause of the loss is not known, 
analysis has uncovered a potential problem with computer time tagging that could have led to loss of control for Deep Impact’s orientation. 

 Image above courtesy NASA. Other images: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/multimedia/pia02137.html

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com.


BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS


BUSINESS TODAY

The latest on Business News, Trends and Techniques


By La Quetta M. Shamblee, MBA

THIS TOO SHALL PASS

RECESSION PROOF YOUR LIFE WITH MULTIPLE 
SOURCES OF INCOME

Even with recent gains in the market, the concept of homeownership is still under attack. Owners feel 
let down by falling values, critics say the American Dream has become a nightmare, and others say 
renting is the best option now. There is no doubt that many have suffered at the hands of bad lending 
practices and economic turmoil associated with the recession.

However… owning a home has always been a huge part of the American Dream, and will continue to 
be so long after the current economic crisis and wave of defaults has passed. Our homes are a place 
of security for our families and for establishing traditions with our friends.

No one can argue against the benefits that homeownership provides to our communities and to society 
in general. Homeowners have a higher level of self-esteem, education, and involvement in civic 
activities. Why try to tear down these fundamental truths simply because we are in a downward part 
of the always dynamic cycle of real estate?

The time has come to reaffirm the dream of homeownership, but in a more sober and accountable 
fashion. We should emphasize responsible ownership for the long term, which helps us and our communities 
achieve the common goals of financial and social well-being. Today’s naysayers will change 
their tune when the cycle rises again, and you can count on that. 

The economic turmoil during the past few years 
has spawned a growing number of part-time 
business ventures. As the number of company 
closures and downsizings escalated during the 
recent recession, it resulted in thousands of lay-
off notices for employees. Some were able to find 
viable employment and get right back to work. 
Some others took the opportunity to take a much-
needed break or enrolled in a school or training 
program to retool for a new career. For some, the 
shock of being without gainful employment for 
an extended period for the first time in their lives 
proved devastating, emotionally and financially.

Although there were a series of factors that led 
to the most tumultuous downturn since the 
Great Depression, the unexpected shake up in 
the mortgage industry caught most everyone 
by surprise. Almost every industry absorbed 
the shock after the Federal National Mortgage 
Association (known as Fannie Mae and Freddie 
Mac) was deemed ostensibly bankrupt in 
September 2008. Without this national safety 
net of mortgage insurance, it had a domino effect 
on mortgage lenders across the country, having 
an adverse impact on every industry section 
impacted by the packaging and resale of home 
mortgages.

People who had followed the advice of all the 
experts on investing in mutual funds and other 
instruments tied to the housing market watched 
unprecedented declines in the value of their 
portfolios and retirement accounts. For many, 
this seemed like the end of the world, but for 
others, it triggered a reason to rethink, regroup 
and retool to make up for lost time and money.

Two of the most important lessons from this 
period are to 1) Eliminate all unnecessary debt, 
2) Put some money away for unexpected rainy 
days ahead and 3) Learn how to establish multiple 
streams of income to ensure that your livelihood 
is not totally disrupted. This third option allows 
for individual creativity and the chance to build 
an income stream doing something you love to 
do.

An extra stream of income for one individual 
may constitute what was previously referred to 
as “moonlighting” (i.e. working an extra job to 
supplement one’s main income). The income tax 
season and the holiday season are two examples 
of time periods that additional staffing is needed 
to meet the temporary demands of an increased 
number of customers. It might be prudent to 
consider and prepare for similar opportunities 
by enrolling in online training programs or 
volunteering to gain work experience to prepare 
oneself to make money during the next cycle of 
seasonal opportunities. Individuals with talents 
for creating new products, novel and practical, 
may find a profitable niche by becoming a 
vendor at some of the street fairs and community 
festivals throughout the region.

This is an opportune time to put some action 
behind your creativity with minimal financial 
investment, especially considering that a broad 
range of products and services can be marketed 
and build into a viable revenue stream via the 
internet.


HOOTSUITE MAKES SOCIAL MEDIA EASY

It’s hard to keep up with social media. When a business decides to build a social 
media footprint online, it seems overwhelming. There are lots of tools to choose 
from and it takes time to build. Most people wonder how they can keep up with it.

It’s important to remember that technology should make your life easier. Social Media technology, if 
used efficiently, can actually save time and help your message reach a larger audience. 

One of the tools that helps streamline social media is Hootsuite 
(hootwuite.com). It’s basically a dashboard for all of your social media 
platforms that allows you to manage your messaging and connections 
across multiple social networks from one secure location. 

The free version allows you to manage up to 5 social profiles. The paid 
version costs around $10 per month and you can manage up to 50 social profiles.

You could manage all your different LinkedIn Groups (post to them and respond to other posts). It 
allows you to post directly to your Company Pages, Groups and Profiles, as well as create job search 
streams.

You could use it for a variety of platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Word Press. 
You can schedule your Tweets and posts on Facebook. If you have a Wordpress blog, you can use 
HootSuite’s to schedule content to multiple WordPress accounts. 

To set up a free account on Hootsuite, just go to www.hootsuite.com

About MJ: MJ and her brother David own HUTdogs, a creative services business that specializes in 
Internet Marketing strategies. They are known for providing valuable information at their Social Media 
and Email Marketing classes. “Like” them on Facebook for trending news in social media, internet 
marketing and other helpful tips, www.facebook.com/hutdogs.

Sign up for their upcoming classes and presentations at: www.hutdogs.com/workshops/schedule