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The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
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The International Space Station floats serenely above a hazy Earth.

Note:  Its floating serenely at a speed of 27.7 km/sec

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This man, and his colleagues, are why there were no super hero movies in the 60's.  Neil Armstrong with the X-15. 

50 Years in Space

    Yuri Gagarin in the capsule before launch.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the 1st human to orbit the earth.  It was a stunning achievement that took the world by surprise.  As the tides of history flow and our own age is forgotten, they will still remember Yuri Gagarin.  Nobody else can ever be the 1st man in space.

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Wow. The last night launch of the Shuttle made the best photo of the whole program.  Looks like a Turner painting.  He would have loved space shots.

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The last man on the moon.  Eugene Cernan, December 13, 1972.  Incidentally, Cernan was one of three people that went to the moon twice.  He orbited on his first visit and walked on his second.   Nobody has walked on the moon twice.

July 20, 1969

July 20, 1969 was the most magical night of my childhood.  We were staying at a cottage near Goderich on Lake Huron.  The people in the cottage next door had a TV with bunny ears.  They could get CBC and some Detroit stations on a good night. 

My father and went over around 9PM.  It was a double treat because I got to watch the moonwalk and stay up really late.  We were initially disappointed with the quality of the TV signal and had trouble understanding what we were looking at.  That changed when Armstrong appeared coming down the ladder.  Everyone was transfixed.  We all cheered when he stepped off the lander.  It was very exciting.  In addition, the TV coverage let us know that all over the world, things had come to a stop while a billion people watched the moment on TV.  For the first time, I think, a lot of people felt part of a global community.  This was a high point, not just for Americans, but for the entire race of humans.  Everyone felt like it was their achievement.

After a while, the excitement died down a bit.  Their actual tasks were kind of boring to watch, except every 30 seconds, you'd remember that they were on the moon.  Right now.  This second.  And you'd get excited all over again.

Around 11, my father and I walked the few hundred meters back to our cottage.  On that part of Lake Huron, there is a large cliff over the beach.  The path went along the top of this cliff.  You couldn't see the lake along most of the path because of trees.  But at one point, we came to a clearing.  And there, right in front of us was the nearly full moon.  It looked so close you could almost touch it.  I felt that if I looked hard enough, I'd be able to see Armstrong and Aldrin. 

The moon was low in the sky and a golden color.  Because we were high above the lake, the moon reflected in 10,000 golden shimmers in the water below.  I think it was the most beautiful, magical thing I've ever seen.

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Apollo 11 blasts off, July 16, 1969.  That's over 6 million pounds of rocket and fuel to get 3 guys and their kit to the moon.

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Gorgeous photo of Saturn.  Click for big.

Via Bad Astronomy

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Space Shuttle - ISS panorama - August 2007 - click for big

Happy 10th birthday ISS! I've seen it pass overhead twice and been amazed.  Here is a website that lets you know when to have a look.

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       Image: JPL Cassini 
The surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons.  The surface of Europa is water ice. The lines come from cracks caused by Jupiter's tidal forces.  Scientists think there's a liquid ocean underneath the ice.  As a result, Europa is currently the best candidate for life elsewhere in the solar system.

Twenty five years ago, it was generally agreed that there was no possibility of life in the solar system outside Earth.  However, three things have changed.  First, we know far more about locations like Europa than previously, mainly due to Voyager and Cassini.   Second, a more general acceptance of the idea that the building blocks of life formed not on Earth, but in space.  This is Fred Hoyle's famous theory that life came via raining comets.  Life was, rather than a completely random process, an accident waiting to happen.  We should expect to see life anywhere with a combination of comets (everywhere in our solar system) and an environment conducive to life (possibly Europa, Titan and Mars at the least).  Last is the dawning awareness among scientists of the success of bacteria.  They are by far the most evolved and prolific life form on our planet.  The only place scientists have looked and not found bacteria on earth is; nowhere.  They've found bacteria everywhere they've looked.  Including under a kilometer of sediment at the bottom of the ocean.  If bacteria can live there, they could live in a liquid ocean under the Europa ice cap, if such an ocean exists.  It will take many years before we can have a look.  In the meantime, we have these marvelous and tantalizing pictures.

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What's that in the window?

An iPod in space.  Advertising you can't buy.

The Rover

NASA's wildly successful pair of rovers on Mars are now almost four years old.  They were designed to last 90 days and cover 100 meters.  Opportunity, the healthier of the two, has now clocked almost 13 kilometers.  For several years, I followed their daily progress via the web.  It was amazing to me that I could see detailed photos today of what the rovers did yesterday, on Mars.  They haven't been moving around as much lately, so I've only been checking once or twice a month.  Spirit, the first rover, is stuck due to low power and a bad wheel.  It should get back in buisiness when the Martian winter ends, but its not going far.  Opportunity has been studying the huge Victoria crater for the last two years.  But it is now about to set out on a new journey.  It will try for a 12 km drive to an ancient and enormous crater 22km in diameter.  The trip, if successful, will take at least one year, probably two.  There should be many interesting new sights along the way, so I expect to be checking progress daily again soon.

Opportunity's road to Victoria crater.  A sol is a Martian day, 25.5 Earth hours.  Opportunity is currently at around 1680 sols and hanging around the south end of Victoria for a while before setting off for crater Endevour.

Here is a remarkable false color photo of Victoria from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in early 2007.  Click on the image for a large version where you can see the rover.  The crater is 800m across.

This is a ground view of the crater in natural color.  The rover is looking north towards its position in the shot above.

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       Image: Luc Viatour via Wikicommons
Armed with my new set of glasses, I've been looking at the moon the last few nights. My old glasses are in the cornfield, so I've been without them for almost a year.  I'd forgotten what an amazing sight the full moon is. If you actually go out and look at it, its magnificent.

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      click image for larger
Saturn by Cassini and more:









And best of all:

Another Non Event

Image: Knoxville News

On Friday 13th, 2029, the asteroid 99942 Apophis will pass as close as 15,000 km to the earth. It may pass even closer on Sunday April 13, 2036. However, the 2036 pass can't be accurately predicted until closer to 2029. During that pass, the path of the asteroid will be strongly deflected as shown in the diagram below. Nevertheless, scientists are pretty sure we are safe. The current odds of an impact are 1 in 45,000. But its still going to be close. Well within the orbit of communications satellites.

The asteroid is 350 meters in length. An impact would be locally devastating, but not an extinction event. Local, in this context, depends on where it lands. A few hundred km if it hit land, but a lot more if it landed at sea due to tsunamis. The good news is that there would be plenty of time to evacuate. In any case, its worth noting because of how close the asteroid will pass, rather than threat level. This is a game of numbers, and the scientists are good at that.

Image: Marco Polo - Wikimedia

Fortunately, there are several organizations dedicated to tracking possible asteroid strikes. The best known is B612, which produced the handy map below. It shows where, if the asteroid were to strike in 2036, the impact might occur. NASA is tracking it as well. There is also a handy countdown page here. I'm just glad somebody is paying attention.

Yuri Gagarin

Юрий Гагарин

Apropos of nothing, here are some photos of Yuri Gararin, the first man in space.  Above is Gagarin in the capsule.  Below the front page of Komsomolskya Pravda for April 12, 1961.

 

Below is a photo sometime in the mid-late '60s. He was killed in a freak accident while re-training for fighter re-qualification in 1968. The USSR would never allow him to fly in space again. Had he been killed in a space accident, the blow to Soviet prestige would simply have been too great. Gagarin was just too valuable.

 

Although blameless in the accident that killed him, he suffered a peculiarly 20th century fate. I can't remember who said it, but they noted that Elvis and Gagarin had suffered a peculiar 20th century fate, they were coddled to death. To that list, I'd add JFK junior, John Lennon and Princess Diana.

Fun Facts To Know And Share

A galactic year is 250 million earth years (the time it takes us to travel around the Milky Way)

New NASA Photo Site

Saturn - from Cassini

NASA today launched a new site that gathers together the NASA photos from 16 different online archives.  It has a tidy, and hopefully usable, flash interface.  NASA sites are notorious for their glitzy but frustrating interfaces.  Anyway, there's a lot here for the space nut.

Relative size of the planets

Apollo 11

Edwin Eugene (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr. on the moon, July 21, 1969. 

39 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.  The whole world stopped for a few hours while everyone watched.  They spent about 22 hours on the moon, including 2 1/2 hours outside.  The two, along with the command module pilot Michael Collins, returned to earth on July 24th bringing 21.5 kg of moon rocks and soil.  Even after almost 40 years, the 380 kg of samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts are still in heavy demand for scientific research.  All lunar material from the Apollo program is the property of the US government, with a peculiar exception.  The astronaut’s moon suits were auctioned after the end of the program.  Lunar dust clinging to the suits was deemed part of the sale.  This dust is far more valuable than any material on earth. During a 2003  court case, NASA estimated the market value of lunar materials at about $4 million per kg.

This image shows Armstrong and Aldrin’s movements on the lunar surface compared to an American football field.  They didn’t go far.

Aldrin after the moon walk.  Here is a man standing at the pinnacle of human achievement.  His eyes are shining.

Armstrong, on the other hand, looks very happy, but tired.

Here is the NASA Apollo 11 photo gallery.