NASA’s remaining Space Shuttle missions
Posted by Webboarder in Space on 24 December 2008
Space Shuttle
NASA is coming close to ending it’s both famous as notorious Space Shuttle program in 2010. With STS-126 coming to an end almost one month ago, just 9 missions (possibly ten) missions are scheduled to fly, after which a gap of 4 years forces American astronauts to fly to the International Space Station in alternative ways, before the Orion spacecraft enters service. Read the rest of this entry »
SpaceX and commercial space access
Posted by Webboarder in Space on 23 December 2008
Falcon-1 flight 4
Since almost 2 years now, I’m eagerly following the processes of SpaceX. It started with the second launch of the Falcon-1 rocket, which tragically ended in a failure, due to fuel sloshing in the second stage tank. About a year and a half later came the third launch, which also ended in a failure, because the first stages residues still gave some thrust, causing the first stage to bump into the second stage shortly after separation. Then, to my surprise, the fourth launch attempt came just one and a half month after the third launch, and this launch finally was successful. Due to the three previous failed launches (the first one also failed), the fourth flight didn’t carry a actual satellite but a simple mass simulator (a.k.a. a boilerplate). The simulator remained on the second stage and is now in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where it will stay for about five to ten years. Eventually, it will burn up in the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »
New site online
Posted by Webboarder in Maintenance on 17 December 2008
Hi there
Finally my new site is online. It took a while because I was looking for a good administration system, and I found one; WordPress.
I had some posts on my old site, but I can’t seem to them back, but I am still looking for it. Also the layout is not my own yet, but I am working on that as well.
So that’s it for now, please come back to see my logs and interesting news.
• Ruben Tulling
- Composite of a Series of Images Taken From Space Aboard the Station
This is a composite of a series of images photographed from a mounted camera on the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, from approximately 240 miles above Earth. Space station hardware in the foreground includes the Mini-Research Module (MRM1, center) and a Russian Progress vehicle docked to the Pirs Docking Compartment (right). Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit said of the photographic techniques used to achieve the images: "My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then 'stack' them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure." A total of 47 images photographed by the astronaut-monitored stationary camera were combined to create this composite. Image Credit: NASA
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By the year 2000, fifty thousand people will be living and working in space.- 1980Robert Traux