Photographing the planets (part 2)
Following on from last issue where we looked at the equipment and capture of video to produce a photograph of the planets this issue looks at the processing of the video into an image. This article really only scratches the surface of image processing as there are so many variables and methodologies that can be …
Exploring the Dawn of the solar system
As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of Huygens’ descent to the surface of Saturn’s giant satellite Titan, humanity’s first landing on an outer solar system moon, and the continuing success of its parent craft Cassini, we look forward to an extraordinary year of robotic solar system exploration in 2015, and one which should bring new …
Land, sea and space: Naval aviators have led the way
The United States Navy and NASA have had a working relationship for over 55 years now and they continue to complement each other in many different aspects of space exploration. This relation was forged way back in the late 1950s when NASA first began to look for pilots to become Astronauts that would eventually fly …
National Flight Academy makes learning an adventure
Who says learning can’t be fun? Certainly not the leadership team at Ambition who delivers “inspired play” in six-day immersive programs at the National Flight Academy located in Pensacola, Florida. It all starts with the story – a heart-pumping, adrenaline-filled mission with squadrons competing to successfully finish a task. Whether it is a race or …
Tim Peake ready to become United Kingdom’s official ISS resident
On 20th November this year, a Union Jack Flag will be safely stored on board a Soyuz rocket, and, along with its owner, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and make its way to the International Space Station. This is not the first time that a British born citizen has flown in space, …
Crews named for future ISS missions
NASA and its International Space Station partners have announced the crew members for three upcoming missions to the space station during 2016 and 2017. Expedition 48: Jeff Williams, NASA Alexey Ovchinin, Roscosmos Oleg Skripochka, Roscosmos Kate Rubins, NASA Anatoly Ivanishin, Roscosmos Takuya Onishi, JAXA Expedition 49: Anatoly Ivanishin, Roscosmos Kate Rubins, NASA Takuya Onishi, JAXA …
ESA experimental IXV spaceplane completes research flight
An experimental vehicle to develop an autonomous European reentry capability has completed its mission. ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle flew a flawless reentry and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just west of the Galapagos islands. The IXV spaceplane lifted off at 13:40 GMT (10:40 local time) on 11 February from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French …
Orion spacecraft performs nearly flawlessly on first test flight
NASA marked a major milestone on its journey to Mars as the Orion spacecraft completed its first voyage to space on Dec. 5, 2014, traveling farther than any spacecraft designed for astronauts has been in more than 40 years. Orion blazed into the morning sky at 7:05 a.m. EST, lifting off from Space Launch Complex …
The One-Year Mission
If all goes as planned, on March 27th, a Soyuz rocket carrying the expedition 42 crew consisting of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch on a six-hour flight to dock with the International Space Station. The launch will begin a one-year mission for Kelly and Kornienko …
Cassiopeia: The Queen
Cassiopeia is a prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere which is very easily recognised as a W or M in the night skies. In most of Continental America and all of Europe it is visible year round but becomes most spectacular in the winter months, when it is elevated to a much higher altitude. Along …
Setting the record: Fourteen months aboard Mir was dream mission for Polyakov
“We can fly to Mars.” That was the first thing Valeri Polyakov said on March 22, 1995, after returning from a 437-day 18-hour stay aboard the Russian space station Mir. During those fourteen and a half months, he orbited the Earth 7,075 times and traveled nearly 187 million miles. After twenty years, it remains the …
Bulawa sisters are sending an experimental garden to ISS
We are Chicks in Space, a team of three sisters – MaryAnn Bulawa, Adia Bulawa and Lillith Bulawa – who are on a mission to help make future long term space missions possible. We have grown up working on NASA projects and challenges and in 2012 we participated in the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge. This challenge encourages high …
NASA Spinoff 2015: There’s more space in your life than you think
NASA technologies are being used to locate underground water in some of the driest places on the Earth, build quieter and more fuel-efficient airplanes, and create shock absorbers that brace buildings in earthquakes. The 2015 edition of NASA’s annual Spinoff publication highlights these and other technologies whose origins lie in space exploration, but now have …
Orion’s December flight test critical for deep space human exploration plans
This December, after years of hard work from a team spanning across the United States, NASA will put America’s future deep-space human exploration spacecraft to the test, flying it further than any human-rated spacecraft has been in over 40 years. The highly anticipated mission, known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (or EFT-1), will put the agency’s …
MAVEN and MOM arrive safely at Mars
Earth’s invasion fleet at the Red Planet now stands at a record breaking seven spacecraft following the successful arrival of a new pair of probes from the US and India in late September 2014. NASA’s newest Mars mission, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the Red Planet on Sept. …
Boeing, SpaceX garner NASA contracts to launch astronauts from American soil
In 2010, with the retirement of NASA’s iconic 30-year space shuttle program, the space agency began the Commercial Crew Program to stimulate development of privately built and operated American-made spacecraft for transporting astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS). Since the final shuttle landed in 2011, America has been forced …
Charley Kohlhase has been our ambassador to the planets
Charley Kohlhase officially ‘retired’ from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1998. At his retirement party, a recording was played of Carl Sagan, who had died two years previously. ‘…. His voice suddenly, pleasingly rang through the room. From the afterlife, Sagan implored, “Charley Kohlhase’s name should be as well known as Michael Jordan’s!”’ (from ‘Ambassadors …
Deep Space Network: Finding the signal for 50 years
Robotic missions exploring our solar system have wowed the world with their discoveries and especially the images they return. But even the most sophisticated spacecraft is useless until the science and engineering it gathers makes it back to Earth. NASA’s one of a kind collection of massive dishes around the world makes that possible. The …
Eight essential facts about NASA’s Deep Space Network
1) As the World Turns: The DSN is Earth’s only global spacecraft communication network The Deep Space Network has three facilities – at Goldstone, Calif.; near Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia, all with multiple parabolic dish antennas, including one dish each that is 230 feet (70 meters) across. Located about 120 degrees apart around Earth, the …
Rosetta is deciphering comet’s tale
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (I’ll call it Comet 67P) has been minding its own business for billions of years as it quietly looped around the Sun every 6.5 years. Discovered in 1969 by astronomers Klim Ivanovych Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko, it spins around on its own axis every 12 hours and is about 2 miles across. …