http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php
NASA does not ask for anything but your name but the deadline is June 27,2008. That’s tomorrow!
Sign up to send your name to the moon. Names will be collected and placed onboard the LRO spacecraft for its historic mission bringing NASA back to the moon. You will also receive a certificate showcasing your support of the mission.
Filed under free, moon, space travel
The Phoenix Mar’s lander is going to land on the polar cap of Mars to search frozen water for signs of life. As I write this, it is 2 hours, 1 minute away from touchdown at 7:53:33 EDT.
The last two landing on Mars has been done by inflating huge balloons and doing a bounce landing. Retro-thrust landings for non-manned spacecraft on Mars have been previously unsuccessful. This is going to be a retro-thrust landing so everybody has their fingers crossed hoping that everything will go all right.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html to see how things are going.
The landing will be streamed on NASA TV here.
Filed under Mars, mission, space travel
Update:
review of the exhibit in Fort Worth
Rules: no lightsabers permitted. No prop blasters allowed. No food or drink or disruptive behavior. You must be 5 years old, 42 inches high, and not wearing sandals to get on the Star Wars airchair ride.
Cost: evening rates Wed thru Saturday are $10.50 adults $9.50 children, which includes admission to the museum which is usually like $14.
Website: http://www2.fi.edu/exhibits/traveling/starwars/index.php
Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Where_Science_Meets_Imagination
After Philadelphia, the exhibit travels to Saint Paul, Minnesota June 13-August 24
Filed under America, Philadelphia, space travel, Star Wars
On October 4, 1957 a spaceship was catapulted into space and orbited the planet beginning the space race, and humankind’s ascent beyond its own planet. The shock of this event coming from the evil empire -the Soviet Union- sent a wave of techonologic indignation and action which resulted in the moon landing in the 1960s.
There are now more people on earth born after the beginning of the space age, then before it.
Who was responsible for this accompishment of Sputnik? His name was the “Chief Designer” because of his pivital role in the Soviet space program. That’s what everyone called him because his name was a classified state secret. His real name is Sergey Korolyov - one of the greatest engineers in history. The development of Sputnik took less than a month. It was a simple design consisting of very primitive parts from 1950s Russia. Sergey Korolov personally managed the assembly of his rocket in a very hectic work environment. Leonid Vladimov had this to say about the Chief Designer:
He had a broken jaw, no teeth, and heart condition, because of the time he spent in the Gulag. At the time, he wanted to work on airplanes when the government wanted him to work on rockets so Stalin thought that was subversion against the state and sent him to Siberia.
Sergey was born on January 12 1907 and died mysteriously on January 14, 1966. At the time of his death, he was working on sending a Soviet Rocket to the moon. The cause of his death is uncertain. It could have been either cancer, a botched haemorrhoid operation, or a bleeding polyp in his large intestine.
Filed under history, mission, moon, space travel, Technology
Here is the link to Arthur C. Clarkes annual message to the world from Columbo, Sri Lanka:
http://www.geocities.com/jcsherwood/ACCego07.htm
Here is some of what he has to say with my comments:
Friends, Earthlings, ETs — lend me your sensory organs!
TO THE MOON: Awesome beginning! It sounds like something William Shakespeare would say! And its very politically correct in that it doesn’t assume what sensory organs you might have.
I send you greetings and good wishes at the beginning of another year. I’ll be celebrating (?) my 90th birthday in December — a few weeks after the Space Age completes its first half century.
TTM: He’s older than the space age! And what’s this about the Space Age completing half a century?
When the late and unlamented Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, it took only about five minutes for the world to realise what had happened. And although I had been writing and speaking about space travel for years, the moment is still frozen in my own memory: I was in Barcelona attending the 8th International Astronautical Congress. We had retired to our hotel rooms after a busy day of presentations when the news broke — I was awakened by reporters seeking comments on the Soviet feat. Our theories and speculations had suddenly become reality!
TTM > 10/4/07? Why that’s next week! The Space Age is 50 years old next week 
Do we have to work that day? Probably so in the USA 
Notwithstanding the remarkable accomplishments during the past 50 years, I believe that the Golden Age of space travel is still ahead of us. Before the current decade is out, fee-paying passengers will be experiencing sub-orbital flights aboard privately funded passenger vehicles, built by a new generation of engineer-entrepreneurs with an unstoppable passion for space (I’m hoping I could still make such a journey myself). And over the next 50 years, thousands of people will gain access to the orbital realm — and then, to the Moon and beyond.
TTM> I hope Arthur reaches his goal of a sub-orbital space flight!
During 2006, I followed with interest the emergence of this new breed of ‘Citizen Astronauts’ and private space enterprise. I am very encouraged by the wide-spread acceptance of the Space Elevator, which can make space transport cheap and affordable to ordinary people. This daring engineering concept, which I popularised in The Fountains of Paradise (1978), is now taken very seriously, with space agencies and entrepreneurs investing money and effort in developing prototypes. A dozen of these parties competed for the NASA-sponsored, US$ 150,000 X Prize Cup which took place in October 2006 at the Las Cruces International Airport, New Mexico.
TTM >> I will have to check out that book- The Fountains of Paradise.
I’m still missing and mourning my beloved Chihuahua Pepsi, who left us more than a year ago. I’ve just heard that dogs aren’t allowed in Heaven, so I’m not going there.
I have just heard that dogs *ARE* allowed to go to heaven and that’s where Pepsi is going!
I was particularly glad to find a co-author to complete my last novel, The Last Theorem, which remained half-written for a couple of years. I had mapped out the entire story, but then found I didn’t have the energy to work on the balance text. Accomplished American writer Frederik Pohl has now taken up the challenge. Meanwhile, co-author Stephen Baxter has completed First-born, the third novel in our collaborative Time Odyssey series, to be published in 2007.
>> I’ll have to check out those books too!
The entire EGOgram is worth reading. May God bless Arthur C. Clarke. I saw him lecture at the University of Kansas twenty years ago!
Today is Space Shuttle Launch day according to the latest Space Shuttle News. Barbara Morgan, teacher-turned-astronaut is going up on Space Shuttle flight mission STS-118, seven hours 1 minute and 50 seconds from now, as I write this, according to the official NASA countdown. Yesterday, Laura Bush talked to Barbara over the telephone. Barbara is bringing millions of basil seeds to plant in the International Space Station to encourage students to think how future astronauts will grow food on missions to Mars. She will teach several classes from space.
The last time NASA tried sending a teacher into space ended in tragedy. Christa McAuliffe was blown up just after launch when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart on Jan 28, 1986.
Here is a video:
http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=020807Barbara_Morgan
UPDATE FOR TEACHERS: Here is the site to sign up for Live, Online K-12 Teacher Training: 1-hour interactive session to implement STS-118 Curricular Modules. It looks like they are filling up fast! (but it does cost $25).
http://www.us-satellite.net/sts118/
Mrs. Morgan is an educational pioneer and heroine!
Filed under International Space Station, mission, space travel
38 years ago today – July 20, 1969 Man landed on the moon. The mission was accomplished “before the end of the decade”.
Here is what some other people were doing on that day:
I was eight years old, and I remember that we invited the Handels over, who did not have a TV Set, to watch the moon landing on our black and white one. Everyone was very excited about by this accomplishment. We were sure that man would land on Mars by 2000!
Filed under history, mission, moon, space travel
Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base at 3:49 EDT
Filed under mission, space travel
Sunita Williams, who broke the record for the longest time in space by a woman (6 months) is returning from the International Space Station Today. Space Shuttle Atlantis is planned to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 1:55 EDT, if the predicted thunderstorms hold off. Here are her inspirational words before she left the space station. There are some pauses in the recording.
Filed under News, space travel
Doug Lamborn is a friend of mine who is now a US Congressman representing the state of Colorado in United States House of Representatives. Twenty plus years ago he was an Elder in a church I went to in Lawrence Kansas – New Life Christian Fellowship.
Here is the press release: NASA Launches Colorado Astronaut into Space
NASA Launches Colorado Astronaut Into Space
Washington, Jun 8 -
Washington, D.C. – Congressman Doug Lamborn (Colorado Springs) today issued the following statement on Coloradan Steven R. Swanson, who be on the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission, STS-117, scheduled to launch tonight at 7:38pm from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“Since the dawn of time humans have looked up at the stars and wondered what was out there. In the 20th century, space travel became a reality and sparked the American imagination. I am excited to see a Coloradan participating in a mission that enables further space exploration.
Like another great Coloradan, Jack Swigert, Mr. Swanson is an inspiration to the people of the great state of Colorado. We look forward to his pushing forward the frontiers of science and the human imagination.”
Swanson, the Mission Specialist, graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1983, joined NASA in 1987 and was selected as an Astronaut Candidate in 1998. Currently, the astronaut corps has four Coloradans, Jeffrey Ashby, Scott Parazynski, and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, a native of the Congressman’s hometown of Colorado Springs. Led by Commander Frederick Sturckow, STS-117 will aid in the ongoing construction of the International Space Station.
Filed under America, Life, mission, space travel
