New Florence. New Renaissance.

Your own personal satellite

 
"Kestrel Eye will be a network of 30 small satellites beaming images directly to troops on the ground to order. A mobile, backpack-ready ground receiver can link up with the satellites in real time, downloading two pictures a second covering five square miles in each shot. Those photos will then be stored on a central server so others operating in the area can take a look.

But perhaps Kestrel Eye’s biggest advantage is that each satellite costs only $1 million, a fire-sale price compared to larger spy satellites."

Popular Science

Spin Doctors. As in High-Orbit.

“By 1958, the leading idea was to put a fleet of satellites in Earth orbit at an altitude between 200 and 1,200 miles. A ground station would link to one satellite as it came up over the horizon, then switch to another when the first one was gone. (Even the first active commercial communications satellite, Telstar, which was launched into an elliptical orbit in 1962, was supposed to have been part of a fleet.) A second way was to boost a satellite 22,000 miles above the equator, where it would be in geosynchronous orbit, moving at a speed that constantly kept it over the same spot on Earth. Whoever could put three of these in orbit equidistant from one another could receive, relay, and transmit signals to and from almost anywhere on the planet.

In a 1945 issue of Wireless World magazine, British scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke had first outlined for a popular audience how such a system might work. While he wrote of a three-satellite network operating in geosynchronous orbit, he also described an orbiting space station manned by astronauts whose chief job was to change burned-out vacuum tubes. The arrival of the Space Age made Clarke’s orbital concept seem achievable.”

Air and Space Magazine on the history of satellites. Hat Tip Werner Vogels.

Today, we supposedly have 12,000+ objects in space – satellites and junk from them. Credit Brisbane Times.

The International Space Station Chronology

USA Today has a nice Flash sequence of how the ISS has come together over the last decade. You can click on each element listed on right to get more info on what it does, country that provided it etc.

The most planned Shuttle mission - that never flew

NASA is used to all kinds of contingency planning. But not much was publicly shared about STS-400 – the mission which required two shuttles at launch pads, both ready to go, in May.

STS-125 – Atlantis – was on its way to repair the Hubble Telescope, a severely delayed trip. In addition to the usual foam and other debris which have plagued flights during takeoff, there is more space debris every year (indeed a piece came within 2 miles of Atlantis during the flight). The Hubble offers no place to hang around, unlike the International Space Station (ISS) where astronauts live for months if Atlantis was crippled. No way to return - and the Hubble orbit is higher, so even as the ISS flew tantalizingly by, Atlantis could not get to it.

Which is why STS-400 – Endeavour – was on stand by. 

If it had flown, it would have been the first time in 40 years NASA had two piloted space craft up at the same time.

I will let this article take over

“The two space shuttles would then approach each other payload bay to payload bay, at a 90-degree angle, about 44 ft apart. Endeavour's robotic arm would grapple the orbital boom system on Atlantis. After Endeavour successfully grapples Atlantis, Endeavour would take attitude control of the "stack" of the two shuttles.”

“Spacewalkers from Endeavour would do one space walk on Flight Day 3 to string a tether between both shuttles. On Flight Day 4, they would conduct two spacewalks to retrieve their colleagues from Atlantis. (the graphic on left from Wikipedia describes the complex move)

Once Atlantis’ crew is safely aboard the rescue orbiter, Endeavour’s crew will maneuver the two vehicles to provide the right separation, which would occur during daylight so the crew could watch for any problems.

Atlantis would be released and be commanded from the ground to do deorbit and landing maneuvers and likely crash into the Pacific Ocean.”

Whew – think about how many things could go wrong in that sequence and be glad we never had to invoke the mission. I am glad I did get close - about 5 miles away- to watch Atlantis take off on that historic mission.

When asked about the risk, Astronaut John Grunsfeld who went on Atlantis said

"When you think about risk, it is all relative to what is the reward, and I think in the big picture Hubble is something that I certainly feel is worth risking my life for because it is about something that is so much bigger than all of us,"

"It is about science, it is about inspiration, it is about discovery. It is about all the kids who will look at the Hubble images and dream."

Wow!

Photo Credit

Godspeed STS-128

Watched the Shuttle Discovery launch on NASA TV – 2 days shy of its 25th birthday on its 13 day mission to the ISS.

Mission Patch courtesy of The Space Store

Galileo’s Telescope

“On August 25th 1609 an Italian mathematician called Galileo Galilei demonstrated his newly constructed telescope to the merchants of Venice. Shortly afterwards he turned it on the skies.

That observation was the first hint that, not only is the Earth not the centre of things, but those things are vastly, almost incomprehensibly, bigger than people up until that date had dreamed. And they have been getting bigger, and also older, ever since.”

Economist

Photo credit Visit Venice Italy

Perseids and Google’s Mobile Planetarium

“The Perseids (named for the constellation Perseus and the spot where they appear to originate in the sky) grace us once a year (they peak tonight) as the earth passes through a trail of dust and ice particles spewed out in the wake of the comet Swift-Tuttle.”

Popular Science

also for fans of stargazing Google’s Sky Map – only on Android phones for now:

“The GPS and clock allowed us to generate maps for the exact time and location, but the compass and accelerometer were what made Sky Map truly interesting. Using these two sensors, the app can determine the exact direction that your phone is facing and display the stars that are visible. If you want to identify that bright star in the west, all you have to do is point the device in that direction and you'll see "Venus" appear on your screen.”

Telescopes That Changed Our View of the Universe

Scientific American has a slide show that lists 10 influential telescopes from Galileo’s to Newton’s to the more recent Hubble and Spitzer (in photo)

“Space Internet”

“Called Disruption Tolerant Networking, or DTN, the new technology will enable NASA and other space agencies around the world to better communicate with international fleets of spacecraft that will be used to explore the moon and Mars in the future. The technology is expected to lead to a working "Interplanetary Internet," said Kevin Gifford, a senior research associate at CU-Boulder's BioServe Space Technologies and a faculty member in the aerospace engineering sciences department.

"Communication between spacecraft and ground stations has traditionally been over a single point-to-point link, much like a walkie-talkie," said Gifford. "Currently, space operations teams must manually schedule each link and generate appropriate commands to specify where the data is to be sent, the time it will be sent and its destination. As the number of spacecraft and links increase and the need to communicate between many space vehicles emerges, these manual operations become increasingly cumbersome and costly," he said. “

Phsyorg

Four decades since Apollo 11

Happy 4th!

If you are looking for things to do today, New Scientist reviews a series of books about the landing on the moon including these two:

“Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's autobiography, Magnificent Desolation, leads the field of new releases…Aldrin refutes them all, if with a slight change of emphasis from his first autobiography in 1973, saying that being the "second man" only started to trouble him upon his return. Under standard NASA protocol, Aldrin - the junior crew member - would have been first to leave the lunar module, but Neil Armstrong was chosen to do it.”

“Rick Stroud's The Book of the Moon, a miscellany with attitude that's great for dipping in and out of. Among the many chapters, you'll find "Facts and Figures" for stats fans, "Gods and Myths" for the less rational, and "Astronauts, Cosmonauts and Lunar Exploration" for those who prefer their Aldrins to their Alignaks (Inuit moon god). Did you know the moon has an atmosphere? Not much of one, but it's not the complete vacuum of legend.”

Picture of Buzz Aldrin saluting US flag - credit Wikipedia