Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Woo-hoo! Stardust is coming home on january 15th with a fresh load of cometary and interstellar dust particles. Hopefuly this will not suffer the same recovery error that the Genesis had and slam into the ground.
NASA Prepares for Return of Interstellar Cargo
Cool launch videos:
It’s one thing to say you like space stuff but it’s another to actually read up on how things in space work. Even a casual glance through this guide will answer a lot of common space questions. How do spacecraft talk to the ground? Why do things orbit stuff? Just what does a spacecraft do when it’s in the ‘cruse phase’? All of this stuff is in here and bunches more.
Another link sent to me by secret agent Greg a few days ago. Its a space mission to send two probes in an orbit around the sun that will enable us to see the surface of it in 3D. On Earth you can’t do this very well because you can only get so far apart and when your at that maximum distance you have a whole lot of distorting air between you and your object of observation. Once these satellites are in place it will allow CME (coronal mass ejections) and other particle emission events with depth. Why is this a good thing? Well it will give us a much better chance of preparing for the problems that often occur when the sun has a little ‘gas’ and we all get washed with extra radiation. That can cause communications blackouts, power failures in big cities, satellites to die. And if your living in space or just visiting (think airline crews) it can be a health hazard. I for one can’t wait until images from these guys start showing up on Astronomy Picture of the Day.
How cool, robot spiders that are designed to move along very thin fabric that future space based structures may be built out of.
Looks as if there has been another setback in the mission of the little space probe that could, the craft has started to tumble and is not longer in a good position to receive communications from Earth. A small fuel leak caused it to spin in an unexpected way but the ground controllers have been able to calculate when it points in the right direction so communications could still continue. The new orientation still fulfils the com and power requirements but not by much. The overall mission has been extended by a few more years in a hope that they will be able to recover and head back to home with the sample of asteroid Itokawa
Looks like the problem plagued space probe Hayabusa did make it’s scheduled landing on asteroid Itokawa after all. During a communications glitch, it kind of bumped into the target a few times. Kind of like a drunk saleryman navigating through a crowded train. The probe didn’t fire the pellet that was supposed to kick up dust and secure the one gram to be returned to Earth. If the probe checks out, they might give it another more controlled try in the next few days.