…Look out the windows of course. That’s why they have the cuploa, proof that sometimes, just sometimes, art, beauty and feeling can win out against harsh economics. This is Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looking out of the observation window, known as the Cupola on the ISS, shortly before her return to earth after a 176 day [...]
Browsing Posts in space
I’ve just found a Satellite photo of the UK taken on the afternoon that Saragh and I rushed to hospital to welcome are daughter Poppy into the world. Looking out of the window on the 7th January 2010, as Saragh went into labour, I had a feeling it was going to be a very special day. The last time [...]
As I type this we are about 1hrs 25mins from the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-125 to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The launch is due at 7:01pm our time today (Monday). This is one of the very rare times, and possibly the last ever time we will see two shuttles rolled [...]
Last night (17th March 2009) I was able to capture a few photos of the ISS and Discovery very close to docking. The combination of circumstance that has to fall into place is stagering, firstly, there has to be a shuttle about to dock, and that doesn’t exactly happen every week. Next, the orbit of [...]
Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted anything here, but there hasn’t been much space action recently to write about. As a catch up here are some of the things I should have blogged about, but didn’t get round to! On February 10th, at 4:56pm, Two satellites in earth orbit were destroyed in [...]
I recently bought myself a really cheep “fish-eye” converter for my camera from eBay, and surprisingly it’s not half as bad as I was expecting it to be. Yes it’s blurry round the edges and looks about as far from anything professional as you could get, but it did only cost five pounds. It would [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt WASHINGTON — NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with [...]
(It makes more sense if you were thinking of Beck’s – Where it’s At (“I got Two turntables and a Microphone”) when you read it) I had the best night yet for Sat Obs last night, despite it being hazy and the ridiculous amounts of light pollution from living so close to London. I managed [...]
So it’s been a bumpy ride for some recently. The first south Korean astronaut was very nearly an ex-Korean astronaut on Saturday when the Soyuz earth return vehicle that she and fellow astronautess Peggy Whitson along with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko narrowly avoided “lithobraking” (slowing down only when you leave a smoking crater in the [...]
What does it say about life when all the visionary’s have died? Carl Sagen, Douglas Adams and now Arthur. Hang in there Patrick
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 [...]
It’s probably old news by now but Burt Rutan has been recovering from open heart surgery. He seems to be on the mend now and has returned to his duties as head dude in charge of making Space Ship 2 fly.
So lots of stuff happened while I was away at GDC, and I didn’t get time to blog about it. Firstly, the most boring space shuttle mission in recent history landed, gasp, safely. However, we won’t be waiting long for the next one, Endeavour on STS-123 is already out at the pad and due to [...]
After waiting for ages, STS-122 finally launched last night, it was one of the few launches recently I’ve not been around to watch on nasa TV. It all looks like it went smoothly, except for the usual foam breakup. The sensor glitches in that had kept the launch date on hold appear to have been [...]
From the times… Despite the outlandish predictions of some internet pundits, the future of humanity was never at risk today. But scientists were hoping to use the fly-past to work out how best to defend the planet against asteroids in the future.
As I mentioned in a post yesterday, the sat known to us as USA-193 has come to the attention of the worlds press as a threat to all life on earth, when, complete with it’s multi-megaton thermo nuclear power source, it hurtles back into the earth’s atmosphere from whence it once came, to wipe either [...]
Howdy Space fans! The date for the rescheduled STS-122 Atlantis mission has been announced. Unfortunately it’s outside of our working hours, but should be fun anyway. You can watch it at home if you are geek enough, http://www.nasa.gov In other news, a huge bus sized US military satellite is due to crash land somewhere on [...]
