Browsing all posts in Space Craft.

Kepler First Science

This is the morning of Kepler. I’m currently sitting in a the Marriot Ballroom watching the speaker, William J Borucki (NASA/Ames) gear up to announcing planets.
This amazing mission has been imaging the same rich stellar field over and over looking for planetary transits: the slight dimming of light from a star that comes from an [...]

NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Postscript

It feels like a lifetime has passed since the Shuttle Launch, but I need to finish telling that story before I can move onto something new. That November the shuttle Atlantis launched flawlessly.
It is all a mosaic of moments: the shuttle astronauts drove past and waved; we all piled out for a group picture; speakers [...]

NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Day 2

We’re here. We’re actually here.
It is launch day for STS-129, the next to last launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. We settled into our seats at T-3 hours and holding, waiting for the crew to head out the vehicle and load up and get locked in (a new meaning for load & lock?)
It is a [...]

NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Day 1

It’s morning and none of us have had enough coffee, but the approximately 100 of us in a conference room in the Rocket part are wide awake. Jon Cowart, Ares 1X deputy mission director, is currently going from table to table asking us to identify mystery items in a run morning mixer.
Earlier this morning (which [...]

STS-129 NASA Tweetup, Day 0

A few weeks ago one of my students pointed out, OMG THE NASA TWEETUP PAGE WENT UP EARLY! While most of us in the room had alarms set off to go off at noon to register for this special event, it wasn’t yet noon, and in a rush of adrenaline and typing we went to [...]

Raise a Wing to Hubble and the Servicing Team

If all goes well, next week a team of well trained astronauts will be working to refurbish the first of the Great Observatories. Astronomers all across the world will be holding their breath in anticipation of the word that all is A-OK and a first glimpse of the first downloaded images. In Tuscaloosa, AL, a [...]

NASA seeks input on how to recycle space craft

One of the many random listserves I belong to is a NASA list that sends me announcements about new calls for proposals and requests for information.
Last week I received one of these emails and it is actually a request that is really cool, and that isn’t usually true – it’s usually the programs that are [...]

LPSC Audio Files: Dusty NASA Pig Skin

The following interview is from what was by far the funniest poster I’ve ever seen that was legitimate.

Here is a link to her science: Paper

News from NASA: Jim Green & Andrew Thomas

Quick notes, often copied from PowerPoints. Attempts to write in full paragraphs not made.
Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science Division at NASA
State of the State of NASA Planetary Science Division (PSD)
18 months ago PSD had these problems:

The Reserarch and Analysis budget had been cut 15%. This below life support levels! With this level of cuts, [...]

SELENE at the Moon

It’s a day of missions. I just left the MESSENGER session to sit in on part of the SELENE mission session. This new craft on the block is a Japanese produced and is returned hi resolution images and movies back to Earth as it systematically acquires topographic maps of Earth’s moon. SELENE, which is also [...]