"Liftoff! We Have a Liftoff! 32 Minutes Past the Hour-Liftoff of Apollo 11."
-- Jack King 9:32am EDT on July 16, 1969
Welcome to the Eastside Astronomical Society blog page. This blog is used to share information found on the internet about astronomy, space travel, science, and other interesting items that may fit in.
I found another really cool thing that the iPod touch can do. You can now watch live streaming NASA TV if you to go this link - iphone.akamai.com. You have to go there with your iPhone/iPod touch. Then click the link and you'll have a rocket in your pocket!
een keeping the rovers going with their occasional cleaning.
A friend sent me this link the other day to a site with a paper model of a Mercury spacecraft. I've made a few (I'll say very few) paper models. These are the model "kits" that you can download a .pdf file from the internet for free in many cases, print on card stock paper, then cut out and build. Seems easy, but not really. Try cutting out a detailed part that has to be creased at a 45 degree angle, then curved to fit around a rocket body. Nearly done cutting the part out on a sharp corner then - OOPS! - knife slips and you screw up the part and have to print a new one out. Been there, done that.
The several times delayed STS-127 launch should hopefully launch today. Easy to see why they didn't go on Saturday. Shuttle can't fly in rain since the delicate thermal tiles could get damaged.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE site has a challenge posted to ask for help in solving a mystery of the lost spacecraft. Back in December 1999, the Mars Polar lander vanished when it was making it's final approach for landing on Mars. I remember it well, I was watching streaming video at work that day anxiously watching coverage to hear that he lander made it. A totally clueless coworker walked by and asked what I was looking at. "I'm watching the Mars landing, we almost have another lander on the surface!" I replied. He then said, "Are there people landing on Mars?". I bit my tongue, and gently said "No." Afterwards, I think I had to leave the building, go in the back alley and scream and kick stuff in my frustration with stupidity that I had just witnessed. Hopefully, as a Solar System Ambassador now, I can clear up some of this cluelessness - or at least I'm trying!
. The lander most likely had a problem where it though it was near the surface, but wasn't there yet, and dropped from the chute too soon and splattered all over the ground. I don't know if there is a reward for who finds it, maybe you get the crater named after you? If that is the case, someone needs to find it before Steven Colbert!
MLAS - Max Launch Abort System was successfully tested in a simulated pad abort test at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island today. The stubby rocket launched