Last night I snapped Lacrosse 5 as it made its way over my house.  Lacrosse 5 is one of the US military classified Spy Satellites (or DarkSats if you are feeling dramatic).  I wanted to get one long exposure with it arcing across the full frame, but a series of screw-ups meant I got three different pics.  While I was watching it, I did wonder what it was watching as it sailed across my back garden (probably not much seeing as it was night… )

It looks like STS-124 launched without incident, no damage or issues being reported. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for Launch pad 39a at KSC which pretty much got blown apart (ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration) when Discovery took off. 

Those are pieces of pad 39a splashing into the water below Disco’s Plume

I snapped this a few nights ago (5/6/2008 00:01:55hrs 48sec exposure).  It’s a quite amazing flare from a NOSS Pair (3-4 I think).  It was purely by chance that I saw them rising fast in the southwest and I hit the shutter on the cam about half way through the flare.  As you can see, I didn’t really think about focus, this was taken with the Kit 18-55 lens on my D40x and it will loose focus if you even look at the lens funny.  There has been some heavy post pro on this image in photoshop to loose the light pollution and bring out as much sharpness as I can.

STS-124 is underway following the successful launch of Discovery on Saturday night.  The main element of the mission is the installation of the second part of the Japanese Kibo research lab, although i suspect of more pressing importance to the crew will be the replacement pump for the toilet.  I hate to think how the ISS must smell, I remember the MIR has its own musty mouldy smell, along with a fruit fly infestation. But that’s another story.

There were rumours all day that the MRO HiRise camera had another great image on it’s way back to us on planet Earth.  Here it is, superb clarity, all the elements of the mission (minus the crew stage which probably burnt up) are in this shot.  

The Phoenix mission seems to be shifting focus away from pure science, and back to humanity. It’s like the late great Carl Sagan has touched this mission from the beyond (he’d love that idea!) Not only did we have the amazing photo of Phoenix’s EDL (which provokes in me the same silent awe, feelings of loneliness, and immense pride that I get from the Pale Blue Dot image and the Apollo Earthrise) but there is also the whole “Visions of Mars” project.

Essentially, the Planetary Society made a special one-off DVD out of silica glass, which is designed to last hundreds or even a thousand years. It contains messages from Carl Sagan, Arthur C Clarke and others along with thousands of names submitted to the Planetary society’s website. One day, and I think before too long, that disk will be retrieved and played. You can only guess at who will be reading it, but to mount an expedition to retrieve it, they will most likely be permanent residents.

I think that I missed a trick personally, as I don’t think I entered my name. I remember reading about it and thinking it was a good idea, but did I get round to it? I don’t know.

What worries me more is that I think the Planetary Society missed a trick too, if I had a chance to send a DVD into space where I knew it would be safe for a thousand years, I would try and cram as much human knowledge onto it as I could. I don’t trust this planet to be around long enough for us to keep our own history and knowledge safe (I still worry about the destruction of the Library of Alexandra).

Living in the UK, I don’t have easy access to NASA TV except through the on-line web streams. You can view NASA TV directly from the NASA website, but if you look around you can find better quality stream out there. You could try this one which is a blistering 1200kbps, which is too fast for my domestic net connection or this one at a more modest 500kbps.

Update (16.10.08): I’ve just tried both these streams and they still appear to be live! Clicking on the link doesn’t always work, I have to “copy link” and then paste it into the “open URL” menu in windows media player. If you know of any other streams, please post them in the comments!

Spacefans, Just take a moment here to look at the picture above and be still in contemplation.

This digital image was taken by the HiRISE camera (the most powerful camera ever flown in space (except for the HS telescope)) on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, in orbit around Mars. As I’m sure you’ve worked out, In it’s sights is Phoenix, on it’s parachute descending towards the Martian surface.

“Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.”

So it’s old news by now. Every cable news channel has been looping the footage because it’s been a slow news weekend. Phoenix landed, it was great, it worked, it sent back pictures.

Same
old
mars.

I couldn’t help feeling a pang of nostalgia for the MER EDLs. The phoenix EDL was sharp, focused and professional, but it didn’t have any of that Wayne Lee flair or the Steve Squyres coolness. I hope they bring back the old team for the MSL Mission.

The cold light of dawn has broken over the Nasa press release.  They claim they have found a supernova, younger than any other…

However,  think I’ve cracked it.  The original release is here,  but after studying it for a long time with a magnifying glass I can confidently announce that it is written in a very clever and sophisticated code.  To decipher the code, one only has to replace the words “youngest” with “Largest” and “Supernova” with “Mothership”.  As you can see, it now makes perfect sense.  They are obviously discussing the outcome of a giant space battle.

The largest  mothership in our galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of its remains. This result, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, will help improve our understanding of how often motherships explode in the Milky Way galaxy.

The tracking of this object began in 1985, when astronomers, led by Green, used the Very Large Array to identify the remnant of a mothership explosion near the center of our galaxy. Based on its Giant size, it was thought to have resulted from a mothership that exploded about 400 to 1000 years ago.

Twenty-two years later, Chandra observations revealed the remnant had expanded by a surprisingly large amount, about 16 percent, since 1985. This indicates the mothership remnant is much larger than previously thought.

Besides being the record holder for largest mothership, the object is of considerable interest for other reasons. The high expansion velocities and extreme particle energies that have been generated are unprecedented and should stimulate deeper studies of the object with Chandra and the Very Large Array.