30 posts tagged with space and orbit.
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From the Earth to the Moon, to Venus, Mars, and more
A roundup of July and August 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Humans and robots explored, rockets ascended and descended, various preparations are under way, and many plans were aired. [more inside]
Good Comet... or Great Comet?
Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is in the neighborhood this month and it's giving the best performance by a comet visible in the Northern Hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. NEOWISE — named for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the telescope which first spotted the comet on March 27th — is certainly a very good comet, though it remains to be seen if it’s what astronomers would call a ‘great comet’. There actually isn’t a settled definition for a 'great comet' aside from it having an exceptional brightness, but astronomers assure us they know one when they see one. So let’s revisit the acknowledged greats of the 21st Century so far before getting into more detail on our current, quite nice visitor. [more inside]
Not Flash, not Friday, not voar!
Even cooler than Super Blood Wolf Moon
The ALE-1 commercial microsatellite (previously)—designed to create on-demand artificial meteor showers (story begins at about 30:30 in the video), essentially setting off fireworks from above the atmosphere—arced towards its destiny in the heavens with the late January launch of the Epsilon-4 solid-fuel rocket by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) from the historic Uchinoura Space Center at the southern tip of the archipelago. The company's CEO and founder, Lena Okajima (
岡島 礼奈
) says she expects, if initial testing is successful next spring, to officially debut the fully operational satellite's capabilities at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Four colors of meteor are available.
Not as cool as a Super Blood Wolf Moon but...
From Arizona Public Media: “OSIRIS-Rex timeline” (video, 6½ min), OSIRIS-Rex^ being NASA's first automated sample return mission from an asteroid, sent to 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth body, and anticipated to arrive back on Earth in September. 2023 The spacecraft rendezvoused with its target and imaged it in early December, remained in orbit studying the asteroid. Surprising discoveries so far have included the observation of water-bearing minerals and of sizeable impact craters. [more inside]
Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round
It's kind of a mess up there
Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL.
Not just Phobos and Deimos
Carpe Atmospherum
Rendezvous with a comet
Today at approximately 08:45am GMT, the Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko after a 10 year journey. Now in orbit 100km above the surface, Rosetta is already sending back amazing images of a rocky, rough rubber duck shaped comet. [more inside]
Ike's Secret Santa - To All Mankind
Everyone knows the birth of the Space Race: Sputnik and Vostok gave the Soviets a huge start while the US floundered about with the odd tiny satellite making it through a cavalcade of explosive fiasco. Most would say that the first voice from space was that of Yuri Gagarin in 1961. They'd be wrong. [more inside]
Godspeed, Scott Carpenter
Scott Carpenter has died at 88. As the commander of Aurora 7 in 1962, Carpenter was the second Mercury astronaut to orbit the Earth. He is best known for having wished his friend John Glenn "Godspeed" as the latter launched into orbit. [more inside]
Don't Look Down
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
To Boldly Design....
Artist/designer Shepard Fairey was commissioned the Center For The Advancement Of Science In Space to design a brand new patch for the International Space Station's ARK 1 (Advancing Researching Knowledge) mission. CASIS's Pat O'Neill unveiling the patch and the ARK 1 proposal.
Our Robot/Meatbag Space Future
Kazakhstan and Beyond!
Taller than a HiRISE
"...all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful"
Between August and October this year the crew of the ISS used a special low-light HD camera to visually capture the earth as it passed beneath them. The result, edited together by Michael König and set to music, is jaw-droppingly spectacular.
It may be redundant to tell you to set Vimeo to full-screen mode before playing, but do so - you won't regret it. Post intended as something of a sequel to this. Some related channels on Vimeo: The World In HD, HDTime, Slow Motion & Timelapse Theatre.
It may be redundant to tell you to set Vimeo to full-screen mode before playing, but do so - you won't regret it. Post intended as something of a sequel to this. Some related channels on Vimeo: The World In HD, HDTime, Slow Motion & Timelapse Theatre.
Space Station Reboost
ver·tig·i·nous
How does it feel to fly over planet Earth from the perspective of the ISS? A timelapse movie by James Drake, compiled from pictures drawn from the incredible Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Place the video in HD and fullscreen for the full effect. via [more inside]
What Yuri Gagarin Saw
First Orbit. "On 12th April 2011 it will be 50 years to the day since Yuri Gagarin climbed into his space ship and was launched into space. It took him just 108 minutes to orbit Earth and he returned as the World's very first space man. To mark this historic flight we have teamed up with the astronauts onboard the International Space Station to film a new view of what Yuri would have seen as he travelled around the planet. Weaving these new views together with historic voice recordings from Yuri's flight and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the World on this historic anniversary." [more inside]
It weebles and it wobbles but it won't fall down.
Year On Earth breaks it down, explaining the complicated mechanics involved in trying to determine how long a year really is, why seasons and ice ages happen, and how not all years are created equal.
Orbital Skydiving
Orbital skydives to follow inflatable heatshield success? "NASA has announced a successful live test of a prototype inflatable heat shield for re-entry to a planet's atmosphere. The blow-up shield could have important implications for future missions to Mars - and also, perhaps, for the nascent field of orbital spacesuit skydiving."
Objects in Space
Is LEO too Crowded?
"They ran into each other. Nothing has the right of way up there. We don't have an air traffic controller in space. There is no universal way of knowing what's coming in your direction."
An unprecedented collision of two orbiting satellites yesterday highlights the increasing threat of space junk.
Mars in Pictures
The evolution of Mars imaging from orbit: Mariner 4 (1964), Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 (both 1969), Mariner 9 (1971) (all NASA), Mars 5 (1973) (USSR), Viking 1 (1975), Viking 2 (1976), Mars Global Surveyor (1996), Mars Odyssey (2001) (NASA), Mars Express (2003) (ESA), up to this spy-quality shot of an active avalanche taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005).
When you touch down/You'll find that it's stranger than known
Truman Show?
A Dutch television producer, who previously brought you Big Brother, now produces a show for British commercial television were you witness the training of three lucky guys to become astronauts and their subsequent launch into earth's orbit for 4 days.
They are trained in a Russian facility and are launched with a Russian rocket. There is only one catch: it's all fake. When they leave their orbiter to make a space walk they will be welcomed by their family and friends, and find out they never left England.
If I were one of the contestants I'd go postal after this. But of course these contestants were specially selected to be prone to suggestion, so they will probably just forever hide in corner so they won't hear the constant mockery..
If I were one of the contestants I'd go postal after this. But of course these contestants were specially selected to be prone to suggestion, so they will probably just forever hide in corner so they won't hear the constant mockery..
Russia to Mir....come in Mir...
Russia to Mir....come in Mir... Russia's been recently unable to sustain radio contact with Mir. The station itself is empty, but radio communication is necessary in order to control the autopilot. They are supposed to try again in about an hour, but if they are unable to do so within that hour, they'll have to send someone up. I think they're more afraid that it might fall out of orbit before it's planned sinking into the Pacific this coming February.
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