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Astronaut Dale A. Gardner, getting his turn in the Manned Maneuvering Unit, prepares to dock with the spinning WESTAR VI satellite during the STS-51A mission in November 1984. Gardner used a large tool called the Apogee Kick Motor Capture Device to enter the nozzle of a spent WESTAR VI engine and stabilize the communications spacecraft sufficiently to capture it for return to Earth in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Discovery. (NASA)
We’re Trashed: Targeting ‘Orbital Debris’
Countries pursue space programs for a variety of reasons — to communicate faster; to track the weather; to spy on one another; to prove they, too, can put something in space. Leave it to Switzerland to launch a project that has the simple goal of keeping things tidy.
As Global Post reports, the Swiss Space Center’s CleanSpace One project is the start of an effort to clean up some of the space junk currently orbiting the Earth.
Over at NASA’s Orbital Debris office, they estimate that there are “approximately 19,000 objects larger than 10 cm” known to be in orbit. Those objects can endanger working satellites — and when they collide, even more space junk is created. (NPR)
Image: NASA
Another reason to keep your shirt on
The Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever
“This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.”
Photo courtesy of NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
Ed note: Perfect for your desktop background. Click the photo for the 8000x8000 image
The first picture of the Earth and Moon in a single frame, 1977 (source)
Never dark
Sun Over Earth (NASA, International Space Station, 07/21/03) (by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center)
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 “Friendship 7” spacecraft on the first U.S. manned orbital mission. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, he completed three orbits around the Earth, reaching a maximum altitude of 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of about 17,500 miles per hour. The mission lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds. (NASA | Images)
The Optical Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) camera on board the Rosetta spacecraft observed Earth during its swing-by in November 2007. A sun-illuminated crescent can be seen around Antarctica in this image that is a color composite combining images obtained at various wavelengths.
Rosetta will orbit comet 67P and accompany it on its journey to the sun. Rosetta has a complex trajectory including three Earth and one Mars gravity assist maneuver before finally reaching the comet. On arrival at 67P, Rosetta will enter orbit around the comet and stay with it as it journeys in towards the sun.
This image was taken with Rosetta’s Wide Angle Camera, about 2 hours before its closest approach to Earth. (NASA)
People of Earth, say “cheese”
Behold: the first image from NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite
You’re looking at a section of the first image to be compiled from measurements made by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NPP — NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite. (In case you were wondering, “NPP” is the drastically shortened acronym for the agency’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project).
The image featured above is a section of a larger image (hi-res versions of which can be downloaded here) that captures an enormous swath of the Earth’s surface, extending from Canada’s Hudson Bay all the way to the northern coast of Venezuela. In the image up top, you can make out Florida and Cuba just left of the image’s center.
Want this on a t-shirt
A New Moon with a shape distorted by Earth’s atmosphere rises over the orange haze of the setting Sun in this photograph captured by NASA astronaut Ron Garan in July 2011.
Streaking: Re-entry of Progress Spacecraft 42P
Have you ever wondered how the astronauts and cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) take out the trash? Several times a year, robotic spacecraft carrying a variety of items—including food, water, fuel, oxygen, medical supplies, replacement parts, and research materials—are launched from Earth to dock with the ISS. These spacecraft are built and launched by ISS international partners in Russia, Japan, and the Europe. After the cargo has been transferred to the ISS, the spacecraft is refilled with refuse, and then undocked and de-orbited—essentially using the Earth’s atmosphere as an incinerator for both the spent spacecraft and the refuse.
Astronauts captured this view of a Progress supply ship streaking across the sky as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. (NASA Earth Observatory)
It’s Quiet — Too Quiet: Russia’s Mars Craft Not Responding
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was destined for one of Mars’ moons. As we reported earlier this week, it was supposed to scoop up some rocks and return home with its specimens, but one of its boosters failed to ignite and now its stuck.
RIA Novosti, Russia’s official international news outlet, said scientists have been trying to reconnect with the spacecraft to no avail.
“The spacecraft repeatedly passed over the Baikonur station and other Russian and foreign points of space communications during the night. There is no news yet,” a Russian space program spokesman said. (NPR)
‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’
“It went against everything that your senses tell you. It went against common sense, it went against your feeling that certainly the ground underneath you is not moving, is not spinning around.” — author Dava Sobel on Copernicus’ assertion that the Earth and its neighbors revolved around the sun (NPR)
