Archive for the ‘out there’ Category
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February 23rd, 2010
South Africa’s second satellite – Sumbandila (“lead the way” in Tshivenda) – has produced its first official images from orbit (see left).
Launched on 17th September 2009 from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket, Sumbandila is a small 81kg low orbit (500 km) solar-powered satellite with a Butane propulsion system successfully fired in January. It carries a 6 spectral band imager (6,25 m × 6,25 m resolution) for ground photography and video (agriculture, mapping of infrastructure and land use, population measurement and the monitoring of dam levels etc), as well as an amateur radio transponder (SA-AMSAT) among other experiments.
See the Sumbandila mission blog for details, as well as the Wikipedia article – there is also a Facebook group.
A video taken of Earth from orbit (13th October 2009, moving over Namibia).
January 15th, 2010
The first solar eclipse of the year is happening today. Twitter is buzzing, you can see photos being added to Flickr, Google’s real-time search results are brilliant. Almost makes up for not being able to see it myself – we only saw a tiny 3.5% coverage here in Durban this morning (07h30 SAT) – or would have if it wasn’t cloudy!
Path details and animations for almost every city are available at the excellent UK Eclipses Online site (doubly useful since the NASA eclipse page seems to be down, probably buckling under the extra traffic – google cached version is available though). Wikipedia as usual has excellent info.
- Some great photos from Nairobi, thanks @paulakahumbu
Update:
- * MailOnline’s report – some great photos and a great video.
- * NASA’s MODIS satellite caught an image of the Moon’s shadow over India and the Bay of Bengal (a roughly 300km wide shadow).
- * SpaceWeather.com has a great gallery of eclipse photos (and commentary for most of them) – well worth seeing
- ESA has a beautiful animated image of the eclipse as seen by their Sun-watching Proba-2.
November 5th, 2009
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc_20091104_apollo12.html
Apollo 12 landing site images taken from the LRO – you can see astronaut footpaths, lunar module descent stage and experiments they left behind.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc_20091028_apollo.html
Apollo 17:
The descent stage of the lunar module Challenger is now clearly visible, at 50 cm per pixel (angular resolution) the descent stage deck is 8 pixels across (4 meters), also note that the legs are also now distinguishable. The descent stage served as the launch pad for the ascent stage as it blasted off for a rendezvous with the command module America on 14 December 1972.
Tracks are clearly visible and can be followed to the east, where astronauts Jack Schmitt and Gene Cernan set up the Surface Electrical Properties experiment (SEP). Cernan drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) in an intersecting north-south and east-west course to mark positions for laying out the SEP 35-meter antennas (circle labeled “SEP” marks the area of the SEP transmitter). The dark area just below the SEP experiment is where the astronauts left the rover, in a prime spot for monitoring the liftoff.
(except this won’t convince the nutters – they’ll just say the photos themselves are faked)
May 21st, 2009
Awesome camera footage from 6 of the cameras attached to the two Solid Rocket Boosters and external propellant tank of the Shuttle – from lift-off to splashdown in the ocean – on mission STS-125.Interesting times, camera 1 (SRB Left Aft):
- 2:24 -
detach - Much
tumbling - 5:07 -
you can see something else falling into the atmosphere and starting to burn up
(the other SRB I assume) - 5:30 -
start to stabilise, or at least less flipping end over end - 6:15 – in
cloud - 6:50 -
glimpse the deployed parachutes (looking up) - 7:07 -
splash
Camera 2 (SRB Lr Intertank):
- This
camera has a microphone, so make sure
you have audio enabled – eerie stuff - 7:17 – camera view starts
- 7:48 -
detach (watch an SRB rotate in sync with us) - Amazing
views and eerie sounds – the white specks are apparently unburned propellant - 10:30 – quick view of a smoking SRM entering the atmosphere, more atmospheric noise now
- 11:30
skip to upward view of deployed chutes - 11:50 -
splashdown, and we fall over. Gurgling.
Camera 3 (SRB Left Forward, facing down):
- 12:08 -
launch at t-10 (facing down, great launch view) - 14:30 -
detach - Camera
view is unfortunately fogged :( - 17:03 -
view clears somewhat, beautiful Earth views - More
stable now, view mostly down. - 18:20 -
some puffs / fire from the exhaust, this thing is still burning - Parachute
deployed? - 18:30 -
ocean through the clouds - 19:15 -
splash, fall over, cool
Camera 4 (SRB Right Aft, facing up):
- 19:40 -
footage starts of launch - 21:58 -
detach, bye bye shuttle - Rest of
video cut short
Camera 5 (SRB Rt Intertank – like the other intertank camera
has a microphone feed):
- 22:22
starts - 22:56 -
detach - Beautiful
falling / tumbling views of earth - 25:25 -
things get noisy - 26:05 -
mic feed stops, view mostly down now - 26:40 -
skip to parachute deployment, facing up, looking almost straight into the sun - 27:12 -
splash. Get to see the chutes falling into the sea and collapsing
Camera 6 (SRB Right Forward):
- 28:18 -
footage starts, probably the best launch footage of the down view - 30:41 -
detach - View
fogged :( - Sun-earth-sun-earth-etc
:) - 33:17
clearer view briefly, more stable - 34:35
parachute? Ocean incoming - 35:17 -
splashdown, splash reaches camera
