I’m sorry but that’s just stunning. Once again I’m complaining at the fact that the UK has no space program of its own. Grumble.
More pictures can be found…here!
http://triggerpit.com/2010/11/22/incredible-pics-nasa-astronaut-wheelock/
A video from my friend Ben: http://jamtat.tumblr.com about the ISS’ “reboost” into a higher orbit.
Essentially what is happening is that the Space Station has kicked on its thrusters in order to make it orbit higher. The consequence of this for the astronauts on board is that of Newtons Third Law pair of forces: the acceleration by the Space Station is being exerted on the astronauts in an equal and opposite direction, leaving them comically drifting backwards at a very meandering pace. These forces are a genuine Newton Third Law pair since they are a) equal b) acting in opposite directions and the one people tend to forget, c) they are both of the same type of force…unless I am mistaken.
On a completely different note, its hilariously funny to watch the guys drift backwards, especially Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa saying nothing but “wow….wow…WOW” for 10 seconds in the video. Proof if needed that space and space exploration continues to astound even the most hardened veteran.
Hey, this is highly relevant to what I'm currently doing in Physics!
A timeline by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech of our ideas about how the universe worked. We moved from a geocentric model to a heliocentric model, also changing from circular orbits to elliptical orbits (for elliptical, read: squashed circle) that helped to explain the retrograde motion of Mars without having to go to the complexities that Copernicus had to. Copernicus had the planets moving on epicycles to explain why Mars would sometimes be seen going backwards in relation to the Earth.
1992 was the first time that exoplanets had been discovered, 2 planets orbiting a pulsar. But these planets could never harbour life due to the intense radiation bombardment it received from the pulsar.
The International Space Station in all its glory. Too bad the Russians will be the only ones to service that thing now the American space programme is at an end. Why aren’t the UK major players in the space race/space industry? I guess we make a lot of components and do a lot of work for the nations that fire rockets up in space, but why can’t we do it ourselves? I still remember Christmas Day in 2003 waiting for that signal to arrive back from Beagle 2 after a successful landing, but it never came (very embarrassing on the television)
A £66 million waste of money.
Cute graphic about impending doom. Hope everyone’s having a nice weekend :)
I’m gonna miss the sight of NASA space craft being blasted into orbit. Genuine sadness.
U2 spy plane footage.
Quite weirdly today, I have provided for you some really stunning video footage from a U-2 manned recon plane with James May (off Top Gear, James May’s Toy Stories and so on and so forth)
The U-2 is essentially a powered plane with the wingspan of a glider that can climb at the rate of 10,000 feet a minute. It can go so high that it grazes the Earth’s upper atmosphere and can also go into other countries’ airspace without actually violating it. So this gives the US military unparalleled access to live intel recon during wartime situations.
I was one of those people that was really gutted when America’s space program ended this year, mainly because back in Indonesia when I was like about 4 I wanted to be an astronaut. The Shuttle itself is a study in criticality as there are so many components on it that needed to work without fail, otherwise it would have been put in extreme jeopardy.
One of the components that did fail (as I researched) was a HSRI (High-Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation) tile that fell off a side and then hit an RCC (Reinforced Carbon-Carbon) panel on the wing, which caused the hot temperatures and gases on re-entry to destroy the wing.
