I’ll be filling out this paperwork for an upcoming epsiode of Liftoff.
Category: Space
Blue Origin lands fired rocket safely ⇢
Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket.
This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design. Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle’s terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad.
The video really is something. New Shepard launches, flies to the edge of the atmosphere, and after jettisoning its crew capsule, enter a free fall back to Earth to be slowed before landing by the same motor used at liftoff.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been attempting to land its Falcon 9 rocket, but has yet to do it successfully. While SpaceX is ahead of Blue Origin in several key areas, yesterday’s landing a big win for Bezos’ company.
Both companies are working with NASA on its Commercial Crew program, which will have private companies flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station while the agency focuses on its Journey to Mars program.
Fan-built LEGO Saturn V enters production review ⇢
I’ve been keeping my eye on this LEGO Ideas project page for a while:
This year is the 45 years Apollo 11 Moon-landing anniversary.
What a perfect time to present you the Saturn-V rocket which took the Apollo 11 crew to the moon out of Lego!
The whole Lego rocket is about 1 meter/130 studs high (aprox. 1:110 scale), has 1179 bricks and lots of features:
- removable 1st rocket-stage with the main rocket engine
- removable 2nd rocket-stage with rocket engine
- removable 3rd rocket-stage with the Apollo spacecraft
- Apollo spacecraft with the “Eagle” Lunar Lander and the Lunar Orbiter
- the rescue rocket on top of the whole spacecraft
- two minifigure astronauts on the Moon for displaying
The project has reached 10,000 votes, meaning it will be considered by the toymaker for possible production.
Sign me up. I’d love to have this sitting next to my shuttle.
The media aboard Voyager ⇢
NASA’s Voyager probes have travelled farther than anything else man has built. (Voyager 1 is the only spacecraft to reach interstellar space.)
The spacecraft each carry a media library on gold records. Vox has a great breakdown of the images contained on the records, showing life here on Earth, or at least how it was in the 1970s.
iPad Pro – A Great Big Universe
I kinda forgot this was an ad for the iPad Pro, to be honest.
Photos of 2014 Antares rocket explosion ⇢
That top photo looks like the end of the world.
Space industry celebrates 15 years of continuous human presence on ISS
A decade and a half ago, the first crew launched to the International Space Station. Construction on the now football field sized station began modestly in 1998.
In the years since, ISS has been busy, as this NASA infographic shows:
Back here on Earth, we’re benefitting from the work done in low-Earth orbit. With current plans to keep ISS in service until 2024, we can look forward to many more discoveries and missions.
A look at The Martian’s graphics ⇢
One thing I love about this film is the attention to detail, and how the art feels futuristic, but not fantastical. These graphics are definitely a huge part of the look and feel of The Martian.
Apollo Archive Project in stop motion ⇢
Remember all those Apollo images released the other day? Someone has made a fun stop motion film out of them. I love the remixes and creative stuff people do with data like this library of photos.
The Project Apollo Archive ⇢
Every photo ever taken by Apollo astronauts can now be seen over on Flickr. There are 8,435 Hasseblad images to skim here. Like Mother Jones, I have some favorites:
NASA: Liquid water flows on Mars ⇢
NASA:
New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.
This water is thought to be briny, which keeps the water from freezing at these low temperatures.
“Water on Mars” has been a story for some time now; while this is a new discovery, we’ve known of ice on the Red Planet for years. It’s unclear where this water is from, and it doesn’t make Mars more hospitable to human life, but it sure is fun to learn more about our neighbor Mars.
Sunday’s eclipse ⇢
Loren Grush at The Verge:
This weekend, the Moon will provide a big, bloody show for those looking up into the night sky. A total lunar eclipse — sometimes referred to as a blood moon due to the Moon’s dark red glow — is scheduled to begin at 10:11PM ET on Sunday.
But this eclipse is particularly special, because it’s happening on a night when the Moon will also be a supermoon. That’s when a full moon occurs on the same night of the Moon’s perigee, or the time when the Moon is closest to Earth.
I’m looking forward to heading out to see if I can get any decent photos Sunday night.