The Mars Science Laboratory will launch late this year, sometime around the end of November, or early December. It's the largest rover that JPL has ever sent to Mars, and also the most expensive. Just about everyone I know at JPL has worked on some aspect of MSL at one point or another, myself included.
The sequence of events for Entry, Descent and Landing is incredibly complex, as you can see in the latest animation video that JPL put out.
]]>I flew down to Florida to try to watch the launch of STS-134 in May. Alas, the initial launch date was scrubbed due to heater electrical problems. My wife and I spent all of 2 days in Florida, mostly driving and sitting out in Titusville. Love the adventure, hated to miss the launch.
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I'm hoping to go down to the Cape to see Endeavour's launch on Friday. So far, all systems are green for my trip and for the launch!]]>As NASA winds down its space shuttle missions -- Endeavour launches on April 29 and Atlantis is scheduled for late June -- it's kind of hard to think that after those flights, there will be no direct access to space via NASA.
I saw one comment that remarked on how often the astronauts say Roger.
]]>Hailed as a both a great day for commercial spaceflight as well as for NASA, SpaceX made history on Wednesday with a 100% successful test flight of its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.
The Dragon will likely service the International Space Station, too, since after the next two Shuttle launches, the U.S. will have to depend on the Russians for ISS access.
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The MESSENGER spacecraftt took that shot of the Earth and the Moon on its way to Mercury. It's hard to imagine that I'm sitting on that dot, writing a blog post.
]]>And Goddard actually invited the Jimmy Fallon crew to come in and see the information about the James Webb Space Telescope. Sheer awesomeness!
Check out all the details of the visit and previous videos from Jimmy Fallon over at
Geeked on Goddard.
So starts the blurb about Space School Musical
This weekend, May 23! That's pretty crazy...
]]>This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. This is an HD transfer from the 16mm original. Even more excellent footage is available on DVDs at spacecraftfilms.com.
The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time. Narration is provided by Mark Gray, Executive Producer for Spacecraft Films.
You should really watch it in HD full screen...
]]>The 2010 JPL Open House will take place on Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16, 2010, 9am-5pm both days.]]>This popular event celebrates JPL's accomplishments with exhibits and demonstrations about the Laboratory's ongoing research and space exploration. Many of the Lab's scientists and engineers are on hand to answer questions about how spacecraft are sent to other planets, how scientists utilize space technologies to explore Earth and how researchers are searching for planets beyond the solar system.
The Open House is a fun and educational experience for children too, with special hands-on activities designed for kids. Admission and parking is free.
There are only four more Space Shuttle flights scheduled before they shut the program down!
]]>NASA has a standing policy to use metric (SI) units for all projects. Unfortunately, much of American industry, including the DoD, still uses English units. The Constellation program decided to use metric units two years ago, and how they want to switch back to English units, saying that it costs over $300 million to re-tool and re-draw all the hardware they would be re-using or modifying from older programs, like the Space Shuttle.
Think about that...over $300 million. That's more than many satellites cost for design, build and launch. And people wonder why companies like SpaceX can do launches cheaper...
Just today, I had several conversations about units at work. For the same project, two different groups of modelers were doing analysis. Once it recently became time to merge or combine the models, lo and behold, we discover that one group used metric and one didn't. Bleh...
The engineer in me just wants the U.S. and the U.K. to just get over it and switch completely to metric. Then I think about baseball and golf and milk and gasoline and everything that would have to change...
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