It’s going to be a busy month for us space fans. At 0403GMT on Saturday 8th, the new ATV, Jules Verne (a bus sized cargo transfer vehicle for the ISS) built by ESA will launch. It will chase the station for a week and then park it’s self nearby and wait for the shuttle to arrive.
Endeavour is due to launch on March 11th on a 16 day mission. Reading between the lines, I’m guessing part of the mission will be either to monitor the docking of the new ATV with the Station to check that it’s working as expected, or to rescue the crew when the ATV ploughs into it. Not that I’m being pessimistic, but have you seen how the Europeans drive?
The main bulk of the sts-123 mission will be the installation of the new Japanese Lab, (Kibō), and the Canadian Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) (which sounds to me like something you could have some fun with). Looks like it could be a night launch, the current blast off is scheduled for 6.28am UTC
Thanks go to Paul for giving me a heads up on the LRO, a new mission to the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Obiter will be notable for many things, but my guess will be that it will remembered for being the first mission able to image the Apollo landing sites (for sure this time), and therefore put a final nail in the conspiracy theorists coffin. (Of course, the more stupid among them will be inclined to call this mission a fake too).
LRO will launch later in the year, Oct 28th. It is to be ‘co-manifested’ with The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) which follows the proud NASA tradition of smacking expensive hardware into the face of the moon and superbly terminal speeds. This time, given clear skies, we should be able to see the cloud of ejecta and the flash from here on earth.
Last August (4th 2007) a mission to mars called Phoenix launched, and it is scheduled to land on May 25th in the Polar Regions. We haven’t had much mars action recently so this should be fun. NASA is already changing the orbits of MRO and MOO and ESA are doing likewise with MEO (that’s the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey Orbiter and Mars Express Orbiter respectively) so that they can all watch Phoenix’s EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing). You’ve got to love all these TLAs.
