SPACE

[RedOktober]

Didn't see fuck all.

[Zoot]

Shame - it was pretty low in teh sky mind, but it was there. Where are you based?

Anyway, keep an eye on this thread in six weeks, and I'll give a heads-up when it is next in view.

[planetoftheclams]

Tinight is the last time to see the ISS in the UK until 19 July, kiddies, and it's a clear night.

Read your heads-up in the nick of time. Thanks man, that was really something.

[RedOktober]

Shame - it was pretty low in teh sky mind, but it was there. Where are you based?

In the hills of Yorkshire.

I think there was a hill in the way.

[PVB]

There was clouds here.

[Zoot]

Tinight is the last time to see the ISS in the UK until 19 July, kiddies, and it's a clear night.

Read your heads-up in the nick of time. Thanks man, that was really something.

You're welcome, mate - spreading the love, that's what we do here.......

[ElfQrin]

The white stuff (nicknamed "snow queen") beneath the Phoenix.
The holes in the image are located under Phoenix's thrusters.

[WiteWulf]

Oh shit...that's unbelieveable, they go looking on the off-chance that there might be some ice around and land on a fucking huge chunk of the stuff!

[axel000]

Looks like the latest ISS visit is going really well, here's some pix of the Japanese Kibo research module (37ft long !!!) getting set up with racks of lab equipment. ISS is now more or less fully equipped for some real science, they just need to get the crew up to 6.

[axel000]

Well, however we feel about the future direction of space flight I for one am going to miss seeing those Shuttles fly. They may have been flying 27 years at this point (STS-1 launched on a test flight in 1981), but they are still in many ways the pinnacle of engineering when it comes to manned space flight.


Columbia, STS-1, in better days. RIP.



Beautiful.

[merman]

I can remember at primary school back in 1981, we were taken out of lessons and all assembled in the hall to watch the TV coverage of the first attempted launch... and it didn't go. But we sat and watched the next launch too. Amazing.

[WiteWulf]

I can remember at primary school back in 1981, we were taken out of lessons and all assembled in the hall to watch the TV coverage of the first attempted launch... and it didn't go. But we sat and watched the next launch too. Amazing.

/me too!

It was one of two TV 'events' I can remember very clearly to this day. I was in primary school at the time, too, I was only 6!

The other one was to come much, much, later...everyone gathered in the boardroom at work watching the reports come in from The States as the September the 11th attacks were in progress

[axel000]

Good news on the private spaceflight front, its rumored that WhiteKnight Two will be rolled out on to the tarmac by Scaled Composites next month for its first public unveiling. This is the craft which will take the commercial Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two up to launch altitude.

Even better, they've already sold 254 tickets for a total of $36 million, way ahead of plan.


Folks, private spaceflight has arrived and is profitable

[WiteWulf]

<youtube>

Beautiful.

Beautiful imagery and event, yes, but there's nothing beautiful about badly stretched and degraded 27 year old NTSC video tape!

[axel000]

Well, Phoenix has grabbed its first real sample. Looks like it has some interesting material in it. Maybe even some ice perhaps on the right ... and the digging tool looks almost like it is smeared with mud on the left and right



The sample should be gobbled up by Phoenix for sampling overnight...

Mission controllers will send instructions to the lander to dump the sample into one of the TEGA ovens tonight. The TEGA ovens, which are about an inch long and the diameter of a pencil lead, will heat up the soil samples and use a mass spectrometer to detect the gases that come off the samples, which will shed light on some of the materials in the soil, specifically those formed by the process of liquid water.

Hopefully we'll get some science back over the weekend, good stuff