Aerojet Propulsion Remains Operational as Voyager 1 Approaches Interstellar Space

Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY) company, celebrates NASA?s recent announcement that Voyager 1 has reached a point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
hH, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system, mark a major milestone as it will become mankind?s first interstellar probe. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light years (9.3 trillion miles) of A [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24543/aerojet-propulsion-remains-operational-as-voyager-1-approaches-interstellar-space.html

Station Crew Ready for Holiday Weekend

After a week of preparations, Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency?s robotic handyman, took part in a series of tasks Thursday that will officially certify the robot for duty.Commander Scott Kelly conducted an experiment that studies colloids, which are substances microscopically interspersed throughout other substances. The Binary Colloidal Alloy Test-5 (BCAT-5) observes colloids and their interactions in microgravity. Benefits of the experiment may include improved engineering and industrial ap [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24546/station-crew-ready-for-holiday-weekend.html

Opportunity Studying a Football-Field Size Crater

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached a crater about the size of a football field-some 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. The rover team plans to use cameras and spectrometers during the next several weeks to examine rocks exposed at the crater, informally named "Santa Maria."



A mosaic of image frames taken by Opportunity's navigation camera on Dec. 16 shows the crater's sharp rim and rocks ejected from the impact that had excavated the crater.

Opportunity completed it [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24548/opportunity-studying-a-football-field-size-crater.html

When natural and artificial moons align

A few hours before last week’s lunar eclipse started here in the States, the phenomenal astrophotographer (and frequent BA Blog photo contributor) Thierry Legault was in Normandy, France, and got a magnificent picture of a different sort of transit involving the Moon:

Wow. You definitely need to click to enlunanate and get the giant version. The full Moon would be enough to make this a nice picture, but look more carefully, just above the bright rayed crater Tycho. See that weird silhouette?

That’s the International Space Station! Thierry used software called CalSky to determine the exact time the ISS would pass in front of (transit) the Moon, and was able to snap this shot during the 0.55 seconds it took the artificial satellite to pass in front of the natural one. At the time, the station was 420 km (250 miles) away, yet the detail in the shot is astonishing. You can clearly make out the solar panels and trusses of the station.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, the Moon is about 380,000 km away, so it’s roughly 900 times more distant than the space station in this picture. However, it’s also 35,000 times bigger, so even its much greater distance doesn’t diminish its dominance in this photo. It’s a stark reminder that we’ve explored very little of the millions of square kilometers of lunar surface.

Also on his page, Thierry has a couple of gorgeous lunar eclipse images well worth your time to look at. In fact, just go to his site and poke around. Thank me later — much later, because you’ll be there a while.

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Related posts:

- ISS, Shuttle transit the Sun

- Two solar ISS transits

- AMAZING Shuttle picture

- EXTREMELY cool 3D Space Station video taken from the ground

- Check. This. Out. Amazing photo of the Sun…

Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/zha1RGjV_Ag/

Aerojet Propulsion Remains Operational as Voyager 1 Approaches Interstellar Space

Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY) company, celebrates NASA?s recent announcement that Voyager 1 has reached a point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
hH, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system, mark a major milestone as it will become mankind?s first interstellar probe. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light years (9.3 trillion miles) of A [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24543/aerojet-propulsion-remains-operational-as-voyager-1-approaches-interstellar-space.html

Station Crew Ready for Holiday Weekend

After a week of preparations, Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency?s robotic handyman, took part in a series of tasks Thursday that will officially certify the robot for duty.Commander Scott Kelly conducted an experiment that studies colloids, which are substances microscopically interspersed throughout other substances. The Binary Colloidal Alloy Test-5 (BCAT-5) observes colloids and their interactions in microgravity. Benefits of the experiment may include improved engineering and industrial ap [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24546/station-crew-ready-for-holiday-weekend.html

Opportunity Studying a Football-Field Size Crater

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached a crater about the size of a football field-some 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. The rover team plans to use cameras and spectrometers during the next several weeks to examine rocks exposed at the crater, informally named "Santa Maria."



A mosaic of image frames taken by Opportunity's navigation camera on Dec. 16 shows the crater's sharp rim and rocks ejected from the impact that had excavated the crater.

Opportunity completed it [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art24548/opportunity-studying-a-football-field-size-crater.html