Philibuster

The shuttle Atlantis is launching today at 2:28pm and everything looks good for launch. I’m watching at Night Sky Observer because Nasa TV is blocked.

Yay thank you weather for delaying the test flight to a time that I can watch it.

Today Nasa launches a dummy Ares 1 rocket to test various components. Currently the launch time is marching along the day getting latter every few minutes. I’m watching the broadcast online at Night Sky.

Wait scratch that the launch is scrubbed. I had to take a call (I am at work) and right after that I flipped back to the broadcast and saw dark clouds everywhere and thought to myself hah there’s no way they are launching in that and sure enough that’s the case.

So read this on io9 today. Russia plans on sending probes to Venus. Hell yeah. Nasa can’t be everywhere, esp with all the anti science clap trap that is in this country which isn’t helping them get funding. So this is cool news for me. Mars has been getting a lot of attention and it will be interesting to see what can be done/found on Venus.

Venus is pretty harsh and stuff doesn’t last long there so the missions will be short lived but hey if we can design something to live for a longer time on Venus just think about how that tech can be used here on Earth. People don’t understand that the knowledge we get from exploring space isn’t just in learning that Mars has water or whatever. It is also with the designing the equipment to do so. All of that filters down into our every day life. So when I see that they are wanting to build a craft that can fly around on Venus constantly for as long as it survives, I say HOLY CRAP AWESOME! for several different reasons. One: hey, duh they are going to build a plane, send it to a different planet 23 million miles away, and fly it around non stop while gathering all sorts of data. And two because designing something so outrageous like that is going to push the boundaries of what we are able to do as a whole. Possibly new light materials for aircraft making them more efficient, new and better and tougher solar panels, maybe better communication equipment seeing as they will have a delay between the planet and us. As better autopilot programs since well again that delay between us and it. And so on. Believe me I could go on for a lot longer.

Hell yeah space stuff is always interesting to me. A pity the first of the several probes will only be sent in 2016.

and BBC

Via io9 and BBC

Awesome the LRO is taking more pictures and now it has some of the Apollo landing sites.  Link. Go look at them. I’ll wait.

Good ok well I hope you aren’t disappointed because all they are are a few dots on a picture of the moon. Because if you are I’m going to smack you for not understanding the real importance of the photos. It is enough to see that yes there is stuff up there, and have a picture of the most historic event in human history. Just like that blurry not awesome picture of your kid doing something special it’s not the quality of the photo but what’s in it that matters. Besides we’ll get some better photos once LRO has reached it’s final orbit. It’s still a little far away at the moment. They say it will get three times as clear. Awesome. It’s a pretty we don’t have HiRise up there because that would be even better. Meh, what I want is Moon landing and travel to be so common that we go back to the same site and see how it changed up close and personal. That won’t happen for awhile, it’s expensive and hard so why go back to the same place go somewhere new and well NASA has been stupid (Though most of the blame lies on the government and the public) and been stuck in low earth orbit.

We need to go back to the moon and elsewhere.

It’s 40 years to the date since Apollo 11. 40 years and we still are stuck in low earth orbit. As a kid that grew up in the late 80s early 90s I never understood why we had gone to the moon and that was it. Why weren’t we back there, why weren’t we still there. Where’s the moon base etc. But we are finally gearing up to go back but it’s taking too much time. I want to see men on mars before I die and it’s time to get moving. But anyways let’s celebrate Apollo. Nasa is and they are broadcasting a bunch of stuff on their website. Go check it out when you have a chance sometime today.

Nasa

The shuttle is supposed to launch today at 2.

So I just controled a webcam, in space, from work.

Win.

The quality is terrible and it’s really just a still that is updated every few seconds. The quality is so bad that I thought it might be a joke and not real. But it seems to check out for the 2 mins I spent seeing if it’s real.

“The Tate Satellite was launched on June 6th 2002. It is currently orbiting at an orbital velocity of 7.67 km/sec approximately 400km from earth in a polar to polar low earth orbit. The satellite orbits earth every 92.56 mins and traverses the entire globe in the course of 15.56 orbits – 24 hours – 1 day.

Tate Satellite is a pilot programme taking place as part of the research and development into the new Tate. Whilst it is not envisaged that Tate in Space will stay within a singular orbit of earth a pilot satellite programme was seen as essential for the development of instruments and new technologies for the Tate in Space gallery.

The satellite consists of a combination of highly polished (lightweight) metal alloy and photo-voltaic (solar) panels. The polished surface increases its reflectivity and therefore its visibility from earth (depending on the relative poisition of the sun).”

Here’s the link so you can do the coolest thing you will do all week.

Here’s a website that will real time track a ton of different space objects. ISS, GPS sats, the toolbag, whatever.

http://www.n2yo.com

So due to a leak the shuttle won’t be launching today. It has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

The shuttle launches tonight. Of course I’m going to be watching.