Back in 2004 I mentioned 99942 Aphophis, a near earth asteroid who was calculated to have a 1 in 37 (2.7%) chance of hitting earth in 2029. That was subsequently ruled a non-existent risk however if it passed through a gravitational keyhole in 2029 it would have a 1 in 250,000 chance in 2036 [...]
Archive for the ‘Space’ Category
Water On The Moon
There was pretty interesting news yesterday that NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) impact did find evidence of water on the moon.
Equally if not more interesting is how quickly Google jumped on the news:
Copyright Google 2009
Google has always done lots of science related logo’s. They are the only ones I know of [...]
Ares I Rocket Test
NASA posted some video of the first stage of the Ares I rocket being test fired out in the desert. 22 million horse power. As powerful as this rocket is, it doesn’t compare to Ares IV and of course the Saturn V.
I get the impression you don’t want to be anywhere [...]
We Choose To Go To The Moon
It started during a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961 with John F. Kennedy challenging the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. 1969, 6 years after JFK was assassinated Apollo 11 landed on the moon and this famous newscast with the late Walter [...]
Attach Orbiter Here
Attach Orbiter Here
Note: Black Side Down
NASA is known as a pretty bureaucratic organization with lots of CYA procedures. But this is just a great little joke hidden up above one of the Boeing 747’s used to ferry the Shuttles when they land somewhere other than Kennedy Space Center.
It’s not just software engineers embedding Easter eggs [...]
Godspeed Hubble
This video is the actual release of Hubble as well as the shuttle backing away from the Hubble telescope. It is best watched in HQ and Full Screen. It’s slightly shaky at times and a little long, but it’s got some great shots of Hubble up close. The Big Picture Blog also [...]
Tour The International Space Station
There is a very cool tour of the International Space Station available on YouTube as a set of four videos:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
There’s no award to be won for camera work as it’s pretty shaky and quick moving not to mention occasionally hard to follow but it’s a very good tour of something you [...]
NASA Constellation Program
NASA has posted a very cool video showing the status, and some renderings of the Constellation program. The parallels to the Apollo program are obvious and intentional as they are trying to minimize cost and risk by utilizing what was learned a generation ago. In just 3 years they seem to have done [...]
UNIX Apocalypse
Apparently Unix time/POSIX time will hit a rather impressive 1234567890 in the next few days. What is even more interesting is that this is happening on Friday the 13th, 2009. You can find out when it will happen in your local time by running perl -e ‘print scalar localtime(1234567890),”\n”;’. Just another milestone [...]
STS-125 Preparations
The Big Picture Blog has a great series of photos for STS-125, the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s just a collection of NASA pictures, but the ones selected are really great.
