In 19 years of service, Endeavour went on 25 missions, carried 133 astronauts, spent 299 days in space and traveled 122,883,151 miles. Captured here by jrodmanjris the shuttle’s last journey, which began Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will end at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Seen here, space shuttle Endeavour passes over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Tips for getting featured: include the camera you used along with any other equipment or processing software that might help other photographers know more about your image. Also, captions mean a lot when the image is not one that is easily recognizable … not a problem here for jrodmanjr.
Space Shuttle Atlantis will make one more trip in November. No engines will fire. No astronauts will be on board. No visit to the International Space Station will be made. Still, the last voyage of Atlantis will a memorable one and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (KSC) is inviting us along for the ride.
A series of events, open to the public, are centered around the 10 miles rolling trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to the Visitor Complex atop the Orbiter Transporter System (OTS). It all begins on Friday, November 2, 2012, with “Atlantis – Celebrate the Journey” events that will mark Atlantis’ last voyage.
A variety of packages include admission to KSC (a $50 value) and round-trip transportation to Exploration Park. There, visitors will enjoy astronaut appearances, interactive exhibits, displays of spaceflight hardware from past, current and future programs. Exhibitors scheduled to attend include Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX and XCOR Aerospace.
Atlantis Adventure Package: features the opportunity to view and photograph Atlantis in 360 degrees from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., an opportunity to see Atlantis travel along the roadway and enter the orbiter home from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and a KSC Up-Close: Launch Pad tour, which takes visitors a quarter-mile within the perimeter security fence of Launch Pad 39-A to enjoy close-up views of the 350-foot-high launch pad.
Cost: $115 adult/$105 child (ages 3-11) plus tax.
Explorer Package: features the opportunity to view and photograph Atlantis in 360 degrees from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and an opportunity to see Atlantis travel along the roadway and enter the orbiter home from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Cost: $90 adult/$80 child (ages 3-11) plus tax.
Lift-off Package: features an opportunity to see Atlantis travel along the roadway and enter the orbiter home from 5 to 6 p.m. along with the KSC Up-Close: Launch Pad tour
Cost: $75 adult/$59 child (ages 3-11) plus tax.
Rollover Package: features special exhibits as well as the Kennedy Space Center Tour, Shuttle Launch Experience, 3D IMAX® space films, Astronaut Encounter, Exploration Space: Explorers Wanted, U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame® and all exhibits during the day. Later, visitors get the opportunity to see Atlantis travel along the roadway and enter the orbiter home from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Cost: $50 adult/$40 child (ages 3-11) plus tax.
At the end of the day, Atlantis will arrive at her new $100 million permanent home, set to open in summer 2013. For more information, call 877-313-2610 or KennedySpaceCenter.com.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit for 22 years today, and to celebrate, NASA has released this awesome image of the Tarantula Nebula, also known by its less romantic scientific name of 30 Doradus.
A nebula is a massive cloud of gas and dust in which some areas are coalescing and igniting into stars. The Tarantula Nebula is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way galaxy. The light comes from thousands of stars in its center that illuminate the clouds and filaments around them.
In addition to being one of the most groundbreaking scientific instruments of the late twentieth century, Hubble is a team player. This image is a composite from the Hubble and two other space telescopes: Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared instrument my super-cool astronomer wife uses. NASA says:
“The Hubble data in the composite image, colored green, reveals the light from these massive stars along with different stages of star birth, including embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in cocoons of dark gas. Infrared emission data from Spitzer, seen in red, shows cooler gas and dust that have giant bubbles carved into them. These bubbles are sculpted by the same searing radiation and strong winds that comes from the massive stars at the center of 30 Doradus.”
Happy Birthday, Hubble!
Photo courtesy NASA. To see the image in its full 3000-pixel glory, click here.
Installation artist Tom Sachs is running his “SPACE PROGRAM: MARS,” a four-week spaceflight involving a crew of actors and elaborate sets made from common materials bought in a hardware store. The sets cover every detail of the mission including getting into space suits, provisions of food and launching Mars rovers.
There will be several liftoffs so visitors don’t miss one of the most popular parts of any space mission.
As this preview clip shows, Tom Sachs isn’t about to put NASA out of business. I kind of like the hokeyness of the whole thing, though. It gives the exhibition a childlike feel that brings back all those fond ’80s memories of watching the Space Shuttle missions. Tom Sachs has tapped into the fact that we all got inspired by space when we were kids, and many of us still look to the stars and planets with a childlike sense of wonder.
Tom Sachs’ “SPACE PROGRAM: MARS” runs from May 16 to June 17.
Thoughts of space travel bring images of the spent space shuttle program, Richard Branson and companies jockeying to build the next best vehicle to supply the International Space Station. Low-Earth orbital flights for commercial purposes should happen later this year, so things are moving right along in that area as well. But now, there is an organization that announced plans this week to mine asteroids for precious metals, bringing back more riches than the planet has ever seen.
Employing cost-effective exploration technologies, Planetary Resources, Inc. hopes to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals.
“Water is perhaps the most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-scale exploration of the solar system. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant,” said Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc. in a multi-media news release and a webinar hosted earlier this week.
Touting benefits in the tens of billions of dollars, Planetary Resources says a single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the platinum mined in history.”Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
Of particular importance to deep space travel are the water-rich NEAs which can serve as “stepping stones,” providing space-sourced fuel and water to orbiting depots, revolutionizing exploration and making space travel dramatically more economical.
Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, said “Our mission is not only to expand the world’s resource base, but we want to increase people’s access to, and understanding of, our planet and solar system by developing capable and cost-efficient systems.”
Those working the space travel industry are looking at every angle that might make it happen efficiently. Recently, five aerospace companies contracted with NASA to study the idea of a new propulsion system, designed to turn the sun’s rays into electricity for space travel too.
