More photos of Atlantis – the final shuttle – can be seen on Universe Today here. Photographer Michael Deep is on location at Kennedy Space Center covering the launch, slated for Friday, July 8. (Oh, and I’ll be there too.) 🙂 “For those of you who have ever had the opportunity to just stand underneath…
Category: Spaceflight
One small step…
Great article in the New York Post by (the Bad) astronomer Phil Plait about the shuttle program, its completion and the future of NASA’s space exploration endeavors. One small step – NYPOST.com “It’s fashionable to say the Shuttle program was a failure — too expensive, too limited. But progress is not a steady curve. Not…
Our Future in Space
Just because the shuttle program will soon come to a close doesn’t mean the era of human spaceflight is over…
Curiosity in Action
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Here’s a very cool video, an animation created by the folks at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory showing the descent, landing and operation of the next rover  headed to Mars: the Mars Science Laboratory, a.k.a. “Curiosity.” Curiosity just recently arrived in Florida after a cross-country flight from JPL’s facility…
The Final Countdown: A #NASATweetup Journal
#1: I made it! On July 8, less than a month from now, the last remaining space shuttle is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral. The STS-135 mission will bring supplies and parts up to the International Space Station and will be the historic conclusion of the 30-year-long shuttle program. Unless otherwise rescheduled, at 11:40am…
Take a Spin Around the Station
Awesome new images of the Space Station and Endeavour taken from orbit!
Up, Up and Away!
The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Cape Canaveral for the final time on the morning of Monday, May 16 2011, and quickly pierced through the low cloud cover, disappearing from view for many observers on the ground but not for those high above in a NASA weather reconnaissance aircraft! They had quite the view…
Light This Candle
“Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?” – Alan B. Shepard, Jr., to Mission Control after delays during his four-hour sit atop the Mercury-Redstone rocket. May 5, 1961. On this day in 1961, fifty years ago, a 10-story Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket ignited at Cape Canaveral, Florida, successfully launching the first American into…
30 Years, 133 Launches, 133 Seconds
In honor of the end of NASA’s shuttle program (with only two flights remaining) CNN videographers have assembled a wonderful montage of the 133 launches over the past 30 years and put them together in the video below. Check it out! (There may be a brief advertisement at the beginning…that’s embedded in the CNN video.)…
Sun Pass
Astronomy hobbyist and solar photographer extraordinaire Alan Friedman captured a wonderful image of the International Space Station transiting the edge of the Sun’s disc during a Winter Star Party in Florida on March 1, 2011. Taken with a solar telescope that images the Sun in hydrogen alpha light, the image above clearly shows the ISS…
Recycling the Empties
During a shuttle launch, the two white solid rocket boosters (SRB’s) attached to the main orange tank detach first* and fall back to Earth, landing in the Atlantic. These are retrieved by NASA ships and ferried back to be refurbished and refilled for the next mission…a process that requires the efforts of many experienced professionals,…
Lights in the Dark 