The last picture is pure eye candy, remarkably beautiful. Who needs art when the world is prettier.
Agreed. I almost didn't include it but it was too tempting to pass up.
Quote:
Protip: If you happen to drift away in zero g, start peeing in the opposite direction you want to go.
Because we all know how easy that would be!
Quote:
If you have a flash light, you can just shine in the opposite direction. the light beam should create an impulse too.
Guess Physics 2 was good for something after all.
Or not.
Quote:
Also, anyone hungry for anachronism?
I'll be impressed when someone does Buffalo Wings!
Quote:
Are all those American astronauts, or are there invited ones from other countries in that picture as well?
Reason I ask is that the European Space Agency seems to bring up people from everywhere, not just Europe. And the Russians occasionally invite people as well.
USA, Russian, and Japanese I think. Many countries have had people on the ISS. Even Canada!|||Quote:
They are tethered. The cannot just drift away.
Yeah, I know, but still... One little cord is all that is holding you above the Earth. Above the Earth.|||After 7 years in space and a date with an asteroid, she's coming home!
Watch out Aussie's!
Quote:
Five days before it will fall into the Australian outback, Japan's returning Hayabusa asteroid mission finished targeting the landing site Tuesday in a final planned ion engine burn.
Quote:
Hayabusa's ion engine fired for two-and-a-half hours yesterday to optimize its trajectory, ensuring the spacecraft releases a diminutive return capsule exactly on course for landing in the Woomera test range in South Australia.
The capsule is still expected to touch down under a parachute around 1400 GMT (10 a.m. EDT) Sunday. It will be just before midnight in Australia.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says Hayabusa is now traveling about 1.2 million miles from Earth, nearly five times the distance of the moon.
A previous trajectory correction burn ended Saturday to bend Hayabusa's future path from an imaginary point 200 kilometers, or 120 miles, above Earth toward Australia.
Tuesday's maneuver was likely the last time Hayabusa's ion propulsion system will be fired. The highly-efficient system, which consumes ionized xenon gas, has amassed 40,000 hours of operating time on four engines since the mission launched in May 2003.
The next milestone will be the release of the re-entry craft approximately three hours before landing. The jettison was rescheduled later in the flight due to concerns about the capsule's battery.
Hayabusa's $200 million mission was extended three years after a fuel leak threatened the spacecraft at the end of its visit to asteroid Itokawa, a potato-shaped rock about the size of a city block. Controllers lost contact with the probe and were not able to recover the craft in time to resume the trip home.
Quote:
"We want to heat it up and prevent it from becoming cold, we changed the separation time as late as possible to three hours before entry," said Junichiro Kawaguchi, Hayabusa's project manager.
The 16-inch-wide capsule will be spring-ejected from the Hayabusa mothership in a spinning motion for stability.
A carbon fiber heat shield will protect the craft during its 25,000 mph re-entry. Temperatures around the capsule should reach about 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit, according to JAXA.
The unprotected Hayabusa mothership will plummet into the atmosphere and burn up.
A NASA DC-8 tracking plane will fly under the capsule's re-entry trajectory to document the fiery return.|||Success!!
|||One question that emerged hasnt found enough attention imo.Has there really been no sex in space?|||Quote:
One question that emerged hasnt found enough attention imo.
Has there really been no sex in space?
|||haha thank you!|||That one looks like Hillary. Not sure about the blond.I have no data either way about if there has been sex in space. I would certainly not be surprised if there has been.
Meanwhile, things are busy around Saturn:
Quote:
The Cassini spacecraft pulled off its latest drama-packed performance Sunday night, braving to skim deeper into the outer atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon than it had ever attempted before in hopes of discovering a magnetic field around Titan.
That trajectory would send Cassini below Titan's ionosphere, enabling the instrument-laden spacecraft to detect the magnetic signature from the moon without being fooled by Saturn's own magnetic field.
But going that low meant the aerodynamic forces and heating that the craft would experience as it flew 13,200 mph through the outer parts of the atmosphere had to be thoroughly analyzed.
The team deemed it safe, yet there was tension and anxiety in Mission Control as the events unfolded Sunday. And with Cassini nearly a billion miles away, it'd take 78 minutes for communications to travel just one-way.
"On Sunday evening, my eyes were glued to eight windows on my computer screen, watching data pop up every few seconds. NASA's Cassini spacecraft was making its lowest swing through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan and I was on the edge of my seat," Julie Webster, spacecraft operations team manager, wrote on her blog Monday.
"It was a nervous time for me - the previous night we had been at JPL to send some other real-time commands to the spacecraft when an alarm came in indicating that the magnetometer, the prime instrument taking data for the T70 flyby, needed a reset. Fortunately, the controller on duty immediately called the magnetometer instrument operations team lead in England. Within 90 minutes, the commands were on their way to do a computer reset and clear the alarm."
The craft's magnetometer would be used to discover whether Titan has its own magnetic field. Earlier efforts by Cassini and the Voyager spacecraft flying farther away from Titan hadn't found one.|||So any results from Titan yet? It seems fairly likely there would be a magnetic field, since I'm sure Saturn keeps Titans core liquefied.
Nurman: Damn! That pic would be pretty hot if it wasn't ruined by the blond's head!!|||What a view of the last shuttle take off.
http://i.imgur.com/NwfUx.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment