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 Endeavour was rolled a few hundred yards from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 28. Credit: Alan Walters - awaltersphoto.com NASA's Space Shuttle Program is inexorably and swiftly headed towards its finale. With shuttle Discovery orbiting some 200 miles overhead on her final flight, launch preparations for the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour moved into high gear. Endeavour was rolled a few hundred yards from her processing hanger at the Kennedy Space Center to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) where she will be attached to the external fuel tank (ET) and twin solid rocket boosters (SRB) which will power her final trip to space. See photo album below from Alan Walters and Ken Kremer. (...)
Read the rest of Endeavour Rolls to Vehicle Assembly Building for Final Flight (326 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ISS, NASA, Space Shuttle Endeavour
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I thought I had a great view of space shuttle Discovery’s final launch, seeing it from the Kennedy Space Center press site. But there were a few other people who had a pretty unique perspective on the launch. A passenger on an airplane, Neil Monday, who was flying out of the Orlando, Florida airport, recorded the shuttle launch with his iPhone, above. That is just awesome. Want more unique views of the launch? (...)
Read the rest of Unique Perspective: Shuttle Launch as Seen from Airplane, Balloon, and Freefall (255 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Space Flight, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-133
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 Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight. Credit: Virgin Galactic Think again if you believe the suborbital space market is exclusively for well-heeled tourists. The Southwest Research Institute has just inked deals with Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace to fly up to 17 scientific research flights. Three scientists, including Dr. Alan Stern, former head of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA and current New Horizons Principal Investigator, will become some of the first scientists to fly on a commercial spacecraft to conduct scientific research. They will fly on board Virgin's SpaceShipTwo and XCOR's Lynx. “We’re another step closer to the era of routine ‘field work’ in space research," said Dr. Dan Durda, another SwRI scientist who is scheduled to fly. "More and more researchers will soon fly with their own experiments in space, and do it regularly enough to allow the important advances that come with iterative investigations. I’m looking forward to that future and helping it become a reality.” (...)
Read the rest of Scientists to go Suborbital for Research (322 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Commercial Space, Science, Southwest Research Institute
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 David M. Harland has detailed man's first precision landing on the moon in: Apollo 12 On the Ocean of Storms. Image Credit: Spinger/Praxis As one chapter in manned space flight draws to a close, it is human nature to look back, to draw parallels and to remember similar points in time. A new offering from Springer-Praxis details man's second landing on the surface of another world, the 1969 mission of Apollo 12. The book is entitled; Apollo 12 On the Ocean of Storms. Strangely, this is the first time that the full story of man's first trip to the Ocean of Storms has ever been written down. The story in-and-of-itself is compelling, filled with peril, discovery and friendship. (...)
Read the rest of Review: Apollo 12 On the Ocean of Storms (462 words)
© Jason Rhian for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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 The International Space Station and shuttle Discovery, about 30 minutes before docking, as seen from Earth. Credit: Theirry Legault. Award winning photographer Theirry Legault sent us a note about some amazing new video he shot of the space shuttle Discovery getting ready to dock with the space station. Legault took the video on Saturday evening (Feb. 26, 2011) at 18:40 UT from Germany, showing Discovery and the ISS about a hundred meters apart, 30 minutes before docking. The image above is a still frame from the video, which can be seen on Legault’s website here. “It’s sunset on the ISS at the end of the video sequence,” Legault wrote. “The video is accelerated 2.5 times (acquisition at 10 fps, video at 25 fps). The altitude of the ISS is 360 km (200 miles)… and the speed of ISS is 17,000 miles per hour (27,350 kph) and its angular speed at zenith is 1.2° per second.” Flash is required to see the video. The 900 frames of the sequence has been registered and combined by groups of 10 (processing with Prism and VirtualDub), Legault said. Find out more about Legault’s photography and tracking equipment at this page on his website. If you recall, Legault has also taken images of the ISS and docked shuttle Endeavour transiting the Sun, and Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope transiting the Sun, as well as many other amazing images shot from Earth. The detail Legault has captured is incredible, and a joy to see. Check out more on his website.
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: astrophotography, ISS, Space Flight, Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-133
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 NGC 6823 is the emission nebula that surrounds NGC 6823, the cluster which plays host to the interesting Cepheid HDE 344787 Earlier this year, I wrote an article about a Cepheid variable star named V19 in M31. This Cepheid was one that once pulsated strongly and was one of the variables Hubble first used to find the distance to the Andromeda galaxy. But today, V19 is a rare instance of a Cepheid that has seemingly, stopped pulsating. Another example of this phenomenon is that of Polaris, which has decreased in the amplitude of brightnesses by nearly an order of magnitude in the past century, although some reports indicate that it may be beginning to increase again. Meanwhile, a new paper is looking to add another star, HDE 344787, to this rare category and according to the paper, it may be “even more interesting than Polaris”. (...)
Read the rest of Another Ceasing Cepheid (311 words)
© jvois for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cepheid variables, stellar evolution
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As we know, Jupiter’s Southern Equatorial Belt has been missing beneath its icy clouds for almost a year now. While astronomers are able to use instruments like Keck – complete with infrared and adaptive optics – we here on Earth have to take our views of Jupiter a little more naturally. (...)
Read the rest of Naturally Jupiter (313 words)
© tammy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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