Education
Comets are unpredictable beasts
The media was full of talk of comets with the inaugural visit of Comet ISON C/2012 S1. It was pre-hyped as being “The Comet of the Century”, being visible in daylight etc, etc. The reality of the matter is that comets are strange beasts and are rarely predictable unless they have been round a few …
Catch a falling star: Quadrantids ring in 2014
Falling stars, shooting stars and fireballs are all common names for meteors. ‘Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket’ was a number 1 song by Perry Como from 1957. The lyrics, of course, allude to meteors. To bring in the new year there is a regular meteor shower called the Quadrantids. This …
Students send experiments to space on suborbital flight
Gasps, whistles, and cheers burst from 300 observers as the SpaceLoft 7 rocket blasted into the sky from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. Among the crowd were 60 students, ranging from middle school through university level, who watched the rocket carry experiments they had designed and built. “That feeling of seeing something you built …
Delta V and the GRAVITY of the situation
In the recent film release, “Gravity,” astronauts are left stranded at the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) after a pretty horrific accident. Since one of the astronauts was wearing a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), they used the nifty apparatus to get to the International Space Station (ISS). We like this movie, even though many space blogs …
How long before we get there?
Vocabulary • Apoapsis Delta V Burn: The rocket firing at the highest point of a Transfer Orbit. • Periapsis Delta V Burn: The rocket firing at the lowest point of a Transfer Orbit. • Transfer Time: The time between apoapsis and periapsis Delta V rocket firings. Narrative Getting from one orbital altitude to another not …
NASA Spinoffs from Mars exploration
In 1997, NASA’s Sojourner robot became the first rover to explore the surface of Mars. NASA has since launched other successful rover missions, gathering precious information in preparation for an undertaking that has long captured people’s imaginations—a manned mission to Mars. The challenges such an enterprise poses have necessitated new technologies that are not only …