Tag Archives: NASA

In Case of Government Shutdown…

Posted on April 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the stranger posts I’ve seen on Facebook.

NASA Kennedy Space Center In the event of a government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. We’ll be back as soon as possible

Hopefully they leave the runway lights on if we’ve got something up in orbit…

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LCROSS spacecraft hits the moon on it’s quest for water

Posted on October 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

I was excited to watch but the results were boring…
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Video.

Here’s the animation, which was much more interesting.
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Animation.

I hope the animation is pretty much what happened, we just couldn’t see it. I hope the data that they get is good data. I’d prefer that it shows there is water;ut if there isn’t, I hope the results show there isn’t. No data / bad data means failed mission…

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft was also passing by a little bit later (90 seconds?) so that should have have some additional data.

LATER: A little more info on this at CNN. They said this was the fifth most watched webcast ever.

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Space Shuttle STS-128 is ready for launch

Posted on August 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

The Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad right now. This always excites me and still gives me chills when it takes off! You can watch NASA TV live on their site. At this point, they are in a hold and I think they are still supposed to launch in the next hour (11:59 PM EST).

sts-128.pngI’ve always wanted to see a launch, I don’t know why I’ve never made this happen. I was supposed to go a few weeks ago to see this launch (STS-128), but they moved the date so it didn’t work out. I’ve got to make this a priority over the next year before they stop the shuttle launches.

It’s been 25 years since this ship’s maiden voyage, it was August 30th, 1984 when Discovery had it’s first launch! It was the third orbital vehicle in service (OV-103) and is now the oldest running shuttle. Wow!

Once they introduced the shuttle, I always thought they’d have some way to take passengers. I always assumed that’d be airplane type seats in the bay, like envisioned in the 1970’s James Bond movie Moonraker (anybody have an image of this?).

So let’s just plan to catch a shuttle launch in the next year, okay? Anyone have any tips on going to a launch?

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Forty Years Ago Today: We landed on The Moon!

Posted on July 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

On this day 40 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. astronaut_Apollo_11.jpg I’m not sure what else needs to be added to that statement: “We landed on the Moon”! How amazing is that?!?

Just for some frame of reference: The Moon is 238,000 miles away (384,000 km), if you were driving 75 miles per hour it would take you 3,100 hours. Keep in mind that’s speeding and you don’t get to pull over for any bathroom breaks or snacks!

Actually it took them more like five days to get there, so just dividing that out, that’s around 2,000 miles per hour (assume it took them a while to speed up and slow down).

When I was a kid, my mother purchased me a two record set of the mission. Lots of audio recordings of the launch and landing. I’m thinking there was some insert with a bunch of photos too. I played that a lot on my record player. I don’t have any idea what year she purchased that, but I’d say I was six or seven(?), and it was amazing to me!

It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I can watch a launch of some kind or another, I always turn on the TV and still get thrills and chills. I get chills just thinking about it as I’m writing this…

Apollo_11_bootprint.jpg
The sad part is we only landed six times and then we stopped.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Moon in Transit

Posted on March 3, 2007 | Leave a comment

Picture 2Wow! This is the Astronomy Picture of the Day today! The above link will get you “today’s” picture whenever today is. This link will get you March, 3rd 2007 which is the one I’m talking about. It’s the moon (our moon) passing in front of the sun using ultraviolet cameras.

The extra amazing part is once you go to that page you can watch a short animated movie of the 12 hour transition.

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It’s been a while since we’ve been to McSweeney’s

Posted on October 11, 2006 | Leave a comment

So it’s been a while since I’ve been to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency’s (they make up funny lists). So here’s a few good ones:

  • Ikea Product or Lord of the Rings Character?
  • Some of Dan Brown’s Works in Progress.
  • HAL’s Comments While Trapped on a Desert Island, and Your Name Is Dave.
  • Failed NASA Space Programs.

    I’ve pointed out some McSweeney’s highlights in the past…

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    Way out there – 3x Thursday: 07/06/y2k+6

    Posted on July 6, 2006 | 2 comments
    1. What do you think of space? Do you think we should explore it, or stay here on Earth and tend to matters here?
    Definetly explore it. No question about it. (Because it’s there!)
    2. If you could travel anywhere off Earth, where would you go? Why?
    Assuming I’m on a tour of sorts I would assume Saturn would offer a bit of choices for this solar system. If I have no restrictions it’d probably be to see a black hole (up close of course).
    3. Do you think we’re doing enough to facilitate science? Why/why not? What would you do to change things?
    Not a chance. We need more budget for NASA and for the private developers.
    Bonus Question for Comments: What are some of your favorite movies about space/take place in space/etc?
    All the ones that come to mind are kids movies: Explorers, The Last Star Fighter, Flight of the Navigator (of course). I’m sure there are more but not coming to mind right now.

    From 3x Thursday

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    My Mom called…

    Posted on July 5, 2006 | Leave a comment

    So my Mom called because she heard (from Chuck) that you could see both the ISS and the Space Shuttle go by tonight and she knows I like stuff like that. So I dug around and found this which tells you when you can see cool stuff like that. Sure enough, I saw the ISS exactly when they said although the shuttle was a minute late. The times do vary slightly from city to city so be sure to look up your town. The shuttle I’m slightly less confident on due to delays, but it was definitely something. Tomorrow, I see they are passing at the exact same time, I’m assuming they’ll be docked! I guess I’ll be able to tell via this tracker tomorrow.

    And you can find your city too! Be sure to check out SkyWatch after you look up your city (it’s more detailed and complicated so do the simple one first).

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