Look High

A Key Test For SpaceX

The SpaceX Falcon 9 engines were tested moments ago at the company’s Space Launch Complex at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The test is part of a dress rehearsal leading up to a launch scheduled for May 7. The exercise had all nine engines firing at full power for two seconds.

SpaceX plans to launch its Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket. During the mission, Dragon’s sensors and flight systems will be subject to a series of tests to determine if the vehicle is ready to berth with the space station. If NASA decides Dragon is ready, the vehicle will attach to the station and astronauts will open Dragon’s hatch and unload the cargo onboard.

This will be the first attempt by a commercial company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, a feat previously performed by only a few governments. (SpaceX)

Photo: SpaceX Webcast screen grab

A Special Ride (Can’t Wait!)

On Tuesday, between 10 and 11 a.m. EDT, space shuttle Discovery, mounted on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, will fly through the Washington, D.C., area on the way to its new home at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Photo: The space shuttle Atlantis is shown being ferried to NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida in September 1998. (NASA)

Mercury Has Odd Interior, Active Past

The small, sun-scorched planet Mercury has an interior unlike that of any other rocky planet in our solar system and a surprisingly dynamic history, two new studies suggest.

Using observations from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in orbit around Mercury, researchers have found that the planet’s huge iron core is even larger than they had thought, and it’s likely overlain with a solid shell of iron and sulfur — a layered structure not known to exist on Earth, Venus or Mars. And there’s more: Mercury appears to have remained geologically active for a surprisingly large chunk of its evolutionary history, researchers said. (Space.com)

General Dynamics Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) (San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)

For He Dreamed Of An iPad — In 1981

In 1994, while running a lab dreaming up the future of newspapers, Roger Fidler starred in his own video demonstrating a prototype he cooked up that was remarkably like the iPad — black, thin, rectangular, with text and video displayed on-screen….

In 1981 Fidler published an essay describing the tablet future. “These units could have tactile controls,” he wrote. “When readers wanted to read the whole story, they would simply press the capsule or tease headline and the complete story would instantly appear on the screen.”

Fidler even devised a fake plastic tablet, holding it up at journalism conferences to guffaws. His mock-up was rectangular and thin. “It just seemed so obvious to me that it had to be a touch screen,” Fidler said. “And it had to be portable. It had to fit in an attache case. It had to be comfortable to hold. That was the idea.” (Read More at WaPo)

The iPad of 1935

The future of the book has quite a few failed predictions in its wake. From Thomas Edison’s belief that books of the future would be printed on leaves of nickel, to a 1959 prediction that the text of a book would be projected on the ceiling of your home, no one knew for sure what was in store for the printed word.

The April, 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics included this nifty invention which was to be the next logical step in the world of publishing. Basically a microfilm reader mounted on a large pole, the media device was supposed to let you sit back in your favorite chair while reading your latest tome of choice. (Paleofuture, Smithsonian blog)

Captured In Space

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)

Watch a video of the maneuver

Don’t go there

npr:

jtotheizzoe:

freshphotons:

melisaki:

NASA ECHO I

grid sphere passive comms satellite, 1966

 This is the most awkward soccer game I’ve ever seen.

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

NASA Switches On Robot Astronaut

The crew of the International Space Station on Tuesday switched on a humanoid robot, “Robonaut 2,” or R2, better known by its Twitter handle “AstroRobonaut.” You can watch the crew booting up the robot right now live via a Ustream. So far, they’ve managed to get it to move its arms, which approach a human’s in terms of dexterity. (TPM)

@AstroRobonaut

Robonaut Twitpic

Happy Valentine’s Day — From Mars

This picture of a heart-shaped feature in Arabia Terra on Mars was taken on May 23, 2010, by the Context Camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. 

A small impact crater near the tip of the heart is responsible for the formation of the bright, heart-shaped feature. When the impact occurred, darker material on the surface was blown away and brighter material beneath it was revealed. Some of this brighter material appears to have flowed further downslope to form the heart shape, since the small impact occurred on the ejecta blanket of a much larger impact crater. (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Remington Rand Computer  : Consolidated/Convair Aircraft Factory San Diego Equipment, ca. 1950s (San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)

Apollo 16 television transmission of lunar module ascent stage liftoff (NASA)

Another reason to keep your shirt on

smithsonianmag:

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