On April 27, the Space Shuttle Enterprise was flown aboard a shuttle aircraft carrier from Virginia to New York, where it will be put on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. The shuttle, which served as a test model but never flew in space, was greeted by Leonard Nimoy who had attended its naming along with other [...]
Archive for April, 2012
Customized Space Weather Forecasting on the Horizon
Heading into the 2013 solar maximum, more companies are realizing the impact that space weather phenomena such as coronal mass ejections can have on their operations. Some see this as a business opportunity: development of targeted space weather forecasting for commercial clients. It was a transformation that occurred decades ago for terrestrial weather. Companies like AccuWeather, which formed in 1962, [...]
Carbonaceous Chondrites Litter Ground After Meteorite Fireball
On the morning of April 22, a fireball the size of a minivan exploded over California and Nevada with the energy of 4 kilotons of TNT. In the days since, meteorite hunters have combed the Sierra Nevada mountains for the remains – and many have struck gold. According to a Los Angeles Times report, amateur collectors are selling their finds for [...]
Change of Command Ceremony on ISS
On April 25, shortly before the departure of Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, the ISS crew held a change of command ceremony. Watch below as Burbank hands over the keys to ISS to Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko. Staff WritersMore Posts
ISS Crew Lands Safely
Source: NASA The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin landed in Kazakhstan Friday April 27 at 7:45 a.m. EDT. They undocked from the International Space Station at 4:18 a.m. officially ending their stay. The Soyuz performed a deorbit burn at 6:49 a.m. before the descent module separated from the rest [...]
Approaching the Countdown for SpaceX’s Dragon Spacecraft
If everything goes according to plan, the first American private cargo transporter will embark on its maiden journey towards the ISS by May 7. During the demonstration mission, the umanned Dragon capsule will launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket which will carry it to low Earth orbit to dock with the ISS. If the test mission [...]
Russian Academy of Sciences Finds Rogue Microbes on ISS
A study by the Russian Academy of Sciences has indicated that ISS currently has a population of 76 microorganisms, some of them hazardous. The International Space Station is an enclosed environment, meaning that microorganisms that make their way aboard tend to stay aboard. This can have consequences for crew health, already weakened by the microgravity environment, and care is taken to limit introduction [...]
Asteroid Mining: To Infinity and Beyond, But What are the Legal Implications?
April 24, 2012 marked a milestone in human activities in outer space with the announcement by a group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors of the formation of Planetary Resources, Inc. The company, which features such investors as aerospace innovator Ross Perot, Jr. and filmmaker James Cameron, is being led by President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki, a former NASA Mars [...]
Famous First Earthrise Over Moon Recreated
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lowell and William Anders became the first humans to photograph the Earth rising over the Moon. In 2012, topographic data from NASA’s LRO spacecraft were used to re-create their experience: Staff WritersMore Posts
Don Kessler on Envisat and the Kessler Syndrome
A drifting satellite as big as Envisat would be more than just a huge space wreck: in case of collision, given its mass, volume and shape, it might generate a cloud of smaller debris large enough to populate the orbit, initiating a self-sustaining chain-reaction of collisions and fragmentation with production of new debris. This phenomenon, known as the Kessler Syndrome, would eventually make space operations difficult or [...]
