Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Vocabulary • Focal Length: The distance between a curved mirror and its Focal Point • Focal Point: The position where all reflected light inside the telescope focuses to a point of light • Focal Surface: The place where the Focal Point converges to • Primary Mirror: The larger of the two curved mirrors that reflect …
Making house calls to Hubble
Servicing Mission 1 STS-61 Endeavour • December 2-13, 1993 Servicing Mission 1, launched in December 1993, was the first opportunity to conduct planned maintenance on the telescope. In addition, new instruments were installed and the optics of the flaw in Hubble’s primary mirror was corrected. After Hubble’s deployment in 1990, scientist realized that the telescope’s …
STS-125 Mission: Last visit to Hubble
For a mission that was almost never to be, STS-125 will be remembered in years to come as a resounding success story, one of NASA’s great missions and a tribute to the ingenuity of engineers and astronauts alike. Rejuvenating the world’s most famous telescope and setting it free to make more scientific discoveries the mission …
An explosive quartet: Supernova ‘multiplied’ by galaxy
Whilst looking closely at a massive elliptical galaxy and its associated galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 — whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us — astronomers have spotted a strange and rare sight. The huge mass of the galaxy and the cluster is bending the light from a much more distant supernova behind …
The Pi Day of the Century
If you like numbers, you will love March 14, 2015. When written as a numerical date, it’s 3/14/15, corresponding to the first five digits of pi (3.1415) — a once-in-a-century coincidence! Pi Day, which would have been the 136th birthday of Albert Einstein, is a great excuse to eat pie, and to appreciate how important …
Philae bounces into history books
The European Space Agency (ESA) led Rosetta mission, made history this past year, and, captured the attention of people around the world as it became the first to orbit and land on a comet. The spacecraft achieved its goal after deploying a washing machine-sized lander onto the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 12. The …
Astronomical serendipity
Since 1594, when Johannes Kepler predicted that there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter, astronomers had been searching for that “missing planet.” When Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres in 1801, the scientific world thought that he had ended the search. Then Ceres disappeared from sight, only to be recovered one year later. Astronomers breathed …
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 …