This video is an excerpt from a film made by NASA in the 1970s about the Apollo 11 moon landing: Episode 1—The Day Before. I particularly enjoy the part where the rocketeers prepare a test shot and then practically leap into a waiting Model T Ford to withdraw to a safe spot. Early rockets had this bad habit of blowing up!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
SUNDAY AUGUST 1: The Modis Image of the Day shows serpentine vortices of air flow around and over the island of Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic.
STORMY SUN: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and STEREO spacecraft observe a complex disturbance on the sun. This releases a blast of magnetically charged plasma, heading toward Earth.
MONDAY AUGUST 2: Hubble Gotchu Guy “Milky J” airs his new video on the Jimmy Fallon show. Filmed at Goddard’s massive Building 7-10-15-29 complex, the video features gang-signing NASA scientists and Milky J’s signature dry wit as he confronts the looming threat of the Webb Telescope to his beloved Hubble.
AWESOME-O-LICIOUS:NASA Blueshift’sWeekly Awesomeness Round-Upsports a cool video tour of the lunar surface based on Clementine data and other morsels of image and video from NASA.
TUESDAY AUGUST 3: A coronal mass ejection from the sun slams into Earth’s magnetic field, igniting a significant geomagnetic storm. Aurora spotters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Maine, Canada, and Alaska report Northern Lights shows. The show continues the following night.
Milky J posse
MILKY J PIX: A NASA Blueshiftblog post by Maggie Masetti features a gaggle of behind-the-scenes photos of the filming of Milky J’s new Hubble Gotchu Guy video. . . ME TOO! And on the (ahem) Geeked On Goddard blog, writer and NASA web commando Robert Garner provides another perspective on Milky J’s history making visit to Goddard.
HERMEAN HOLIDAY: Six years ago today, NASA launched the MESSENGER spacecraft to Mercury.
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 4:Earth Observatory posts a Terra satellite image of the Pakistani city of Kheshgi, “awash in floodwater,” like other devastated areas of the country’s Northwest.
THURSDAY AUGUST 5: The Pinoy Achiever’s blogspotlightsJosefino Comiso, a senior scientist at the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of the Goddard Space Flight Center. The blog celebrates the successes of Philippinos. (“Pinoy” is a word Philippinos use to refer to themselves.)
80 SMALL LEAPS: Happy 80th birthday, Neil Armstrong. On this day in 1930, you were born in Wapakoneta, Ohio. And during a notable field trip on July 20, 1969, you said: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
mash-up
COSMIC MASH UP: A new video simultaneously shows two galaxies colliding, seen through the eyes of NASA’s three surviving “great” space observatories: the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope. (Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, R.I.P., was the fourth.)
FRIDAY AUGUST 6:Spaceweather.com wraps up this week’s wild solar shenanigans this way:
THE SHOW IS OVER . . . FOR NOW: Geomagnetic activity has subsided to low levels and the aurora show of August 3rd and 4th has come to an end. At the height of the display, Northern Lights descended as far south as Wisconsin and Iowa in the United States.
DON’T MISS the latest mindblowing SDO image of the August 1 solar disturbance — in fact, here it is below! This space observatory is truly living up to its promise as the Hubble Space Telescope of solar astronomy.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
SUNDAY JULY 4: On this day in 1997, the inexpensive Mars Pathfinder (costing only $267 million) bounced on its air bags to the surface of the Red Planet.
MONDAY JULY 5: While the rest of us were on a federal holiday, seeking shelter from the brain-melting heat wave, the NASA Blueshift team posts their Weekly Awesomeness Roundup, with blogolicious multimedia tidbits from NASA, astronomy, and science at large. . . . GOGBLOG’S FAVE: How do 7th graders sketch/describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab? Is it: “Mommy, I’m afraid, can we go home now?” Find out the surprising answer for yourself!
TUESDAY JULY 6: NASA fires off a special Hubble Space Telescope image of star cluster NGC 3603 reminiscent of a July 4 fireworks air burst. Thanks, Wide Field Camera 3 — an instrument developed jointly by the Hubble program at Goddard Space Flight Center, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation
KEEPIN’ IT GREEN: At an event hosted by the Green Building Council, the Maryland Department of Environment presents Goddard Space Flight Center with a Maryland Green Registry Leadership Award for continuing efforts to reduce GSFC’s environmental footprint — including reducing the amount of waste it produces by 25 percent.
GOOD DAY SUNSHINE: The SDOMission2009YouTube channel posts a new video, Seeing A Star In A New Light, highlighting the head-explodingly cool images of the sun captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
WEDNESDAY JULY 7: A web feature by NASA Earth Science News Team reporter Patrick Lynch details the upcoming field campaign by NASA aircraft and satellites to study hurricanes: the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) mission. Goddard researchers Scott Braun and Gerry Heymsfield and other members of the GRiP science team will use the new data to figure out what spins up killer storms. THURSDAY JULY 8:What on Earth spotlights other NASA bloggers who cover earth science, including {ahem} gogblog . . . . READY FOR TAKE-OFF: Today’s featured post: Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Tony Freeman writes on the Big Fat Planet blog about NASA’s aerial armada of research aircraft. . . . NASA: spaceships, airships, and more.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team posts its featured image — a snapshot of the Apollo 16 landing site lit by a high-noon sun. . . . TAKE THAT, FAKE MOON LANDING CONSPIRACISTS: Shining brightly are the package of scientific instruments that astronauts left at the site as well as the radioisotope-powered electric generator that powered them for years after we left the moon.
FRIDAY JULY 9: Bright-eyed and bushy tailed Goddard sun scientists Alex Young and Holly Gilbert give press interviews starting at {{shudder}} 6:00 a.m. to preview the July 11 total solar eclipse. Here is Holly being interviewed on a Tampa TV show. . . . and this clip of Alex talking about the eclipse. (Sorry, in both cases, you will have to watch a short commercial message first.)
ITS A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE?What On Earth blogger Adam Voiland posts the first-ever What On Earth Is THAT? guess-what-this-image-is recurring contest blog feature thingie. Guess correctly and win a free suborbital Virgin Galactic flight with Paris Hilton. Guess correctly and win the undying admiration of a NASA science blogger.
THE GOLDEN ARCHES: New Solar Dynamics Observatoryvideo shows glowing star stuff arcing along loops in the sun’s magnetic field.
SATURDAY JULY 10: On this day in 1962, Telstar 1 — the first privately funded satellite — was launched. AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories paid the bill. HOT LINKS-O-THE WEEK: In Outside Goddard, Elizabeth M. Jarrell offers short profiles of current and former Goddard people and the interesting lives they lead outside the gates. When Bob Met Alice profiles “newlyweds Bob Wigand, 85, and Mary Alice, 86, thank Goddard for giving them a common background.
I CAN SEE YOUR BIG FAT PLANET FROM HERE: Don’t miss Goddard’s Flickr album of Earth. Pretty pix and animations of the home planet.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
On Monday June 21, “The Case of the Mylar Mystery” debuted on the History Detectives program. The detectives came to Goddard in January to figure out whether a scrap of silvery Mylar was could be traced back to Goddard’s Echo II satelloon project. . . . Well, gogblog won’t ruin it for you by revealing the answer, but you can download the transcript if you don’t have time to watch the show.
On Wednesday June 23, the Goddard Public Affairs Office (PAO) posted a mission update feature, ‘L2′ Will be the James Webb Space Telescope’s Home in Space. The orbital sweet spot is called L2 and it sits about 930,000 miles from Earth, where the gravitational tugs of the sun and Earth balance out . . . . .Why the way-out waystation? For one thing, the gravitational stalemate means it takes minimal energy to make the ‘scope stay put at L2. Also, the frigid temperature out there keeps Webb’s sensitive instruments frosty and sharp. And L2 offers an unobstructed view of the cosmos.
The lunar farside
Also on Wednesday, Goddard PAO’s Andrew Freeberg chilled out on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s first birthday at the moon with Ten Cool Things Seen in the First Year of LRO. And the winning contestants are 1) the coldest place in the solar system ever measured, 2) astronaut footprints, 3) a near miss with Cone Crater, 4) a lost Soviet rover, 5) the lunar farside, 6) a bevy of boulders, 7) mountains, 08) rilles, 9) pits, and 10) frigid polar craters. Andy’s fine review features lots of blogolicious moon images.
Goddard Astronomy Club president Cornelis Dutoit keeps an eye on the sun as relentless shimmering waves of solar energy melt the faces off of everyone else attending Celebrate Goddard 2010.
On Thursday June 24, “Celebrate Goddard” took over the grassy mall near the main gate, spotlighting “the diverse skills and individual differences that have made our legacy of success possible.” Atta boy, Goddard! You go, major NASA center for research in astronomy, earth, and space science! Lookin’ sharp, kid! . . . . . The day featured exhibits by Goddard scientists, organizations, and clubs; a Center talent show; and the first-ever Celebrate Goddard parade, featuring the DuVal High Marching Tigers. . . . . The weather: hot enough to melt your face off, with heat index up to 104 degrees.
Also on Thursday, NASA released a near-full disk image of Earth snapped by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team created it by assembling multiple scans captured by LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera. The image was originally posted on the Arizona State University LROC featured image site by Mark Robinson, LROC’s Principle Investigator.
***UPDATE: Friday June 25, 4:22 pm . . . NASA released another LRO image: Goddard Crater, located along the Moon’s eastern limb and named after the namesake of our beloved Center, pioneering rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945). The LOLA instrument that captured the image was built here.
Astronaut Sally K. Ride
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES
Thursday marked 27 years since the space shuttle mission — STS-7, June 18-24, 1983 — that carried astrophysicist Sally K. Ride into space and into history as the first American woman in orbit. . . . . But the anniversary is bittersweet: STS-7 was a flight of the Challenger, which was lost with all hands about three years later, January 28, 1986. Two female astronauts died that day: Judith Resnik and Christa McAuliffe.
On June 25, 1997, the Russian resupply vessel Progress collided with the science module Spektor on the Mir space station while attempting to dock. The blow punctured and decompressed Spektor, and knocked out its solar panels. . . . . The two cosmonauts and one American astronaut (Michael Foale) on Mir were not harmed. . . . . The Russian space agency refused to abandon ship, and kept Mir alive until it could be repaired. Foale stayed aboard, too. . . . . Watch the animated recreation of this near-catastrophe on YouTube to get a sense of just how bad it was — and how lucky the astro/cosmonauts were to make it through alive!
On June 26, 1978, NASA launched Seasat-A, the first satellite to make global observations of Earth’s oceans. The satellite carried the first spaceborne synthetic aperture radar. After 105 days of returning data, Seasat was crippled by an electrical fault. . . . . Now here is a blogolicious Seasat-A science fact: While not anticipated by the satellite’s designers, Seasat-A was actually able to detect the waves of SUBMERGED submarines!
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Gogblog loves space tech, and here is a massive dose of it for like-minded technophiles. Remembering the Giants: Apollo Rocket Propulsion Development, Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 45 (NASA SP-2009-4545), edited by Steven C. Fisher and Shamim A. Rahman. . . . . This monograph is the proceedings from a series of lectures on Apollo propulsion development hosted by NASA’s Stennis Space Center. . . . . Request a copy of this monograph by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the NASA History Division, Room CO72, NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546. Or just download a PDF of the report.
Gogblog gratefully credits the NASA History Division website as the source of the historical tidbits this week.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
A year ago today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — that’s “LRO” to the spacecraft’s many close personal friends — reached the moon. It’s been an eventful and successful mission. LRO, let me be the first to say, “You Rock!”
Speaking of rocks, LRO has seen rocks a’plenty. Not to mention lunar rilles, a Russian rover, and the coldest place in the solar system ever measured. For more details and blogolicious weblinks, see the roundup of LRO discoveries and observations by Goddard’s own Andy Freeberg.
Here are Gogblog’s LRO mission highlights, fun facts, sideshows, and uninvited commentary:
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched June 18 2009 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It arrived at the moon Tuesday June 23.
Historical irony: In the 1960s, the United States was locked in a race to the moon with the Soviet Union. But today, a Russian-built RD-180 first-stage rocket engine lifts every Atlas V off the pad, including the one that took LRO to the moon. Also, a Russian team built LRO’s Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector.
Fly me to the moon . . .
Science mission: The spacecraft carries 7 instruments to survey the moon’s surface and environment and look for water. This is data that any future human explorers would benefit from — for instance, to identify safe landing sites, locate sources of water and energy, and minimize radiation exposure.
Fun fact: An observing station at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center shoots a laser beam at LRO every day to measure the spacecraft’s distance to an accuracy of 4 inches.
NASA imaging team discovers shocking new evidence that intelligent beings once walked on the moon! (click to see)
On July 2, NASA released the first images of the moon from the supersharp Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, showing a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).
On July 17, fake moon landing conspiracy enthusiasts suffered a devastating dose of reality when NASA released LROC images of the lunar lander sites for Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16, and 17. In the Apollo 14 image, footprints and scientific instruments left by the astronauts were visible — I mean, unless the LROC images are fakes, and pigs can fly, and the tooth fairy is real.
Fun fact: In the LROC images, the 12-foot diameter lunar landers occupy just 9 pixels.
Great pixels: If you want to drink up some fantastic images from LRO and the history of manned exploration of the moon, check out the Big Picture image spread that ran in January 2010 on the Boston Globe website.
Cold storage: shadowed craters could keep water frozen for billions of years.
On September 17, LRO science teams released early results of the mission. Included in the findings: LRO’s Diviner instrument found spots in permanently shadowed polar craters at -415 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 Celsius). That’s cold enough to store water ice or hydrogen for billions of years.
In a related development . . . On September 25, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science that data from the Indian lunar Chandrayaan-1 probe and NASA’s Deep Impact and Cassini spacecraft confirmed the presence of water molecules on the moon’s surface — especially near the poles.
A second mission, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), had piggybacked to the moon on LRO’s Atlas V. (Its instruments rode to space in a ring-shaped package stuck between the top of the Atlas V’s “Centaur” second stage and the bottom of the LRO payload.)
The scientists crashed the spent Centaur into the moon’s surface on October 9 and used LCROSS’s instruments to search the debris plume for water.On November 13, the LCROSS science team announcedthey found it. “I am here today to tell you that, indeed, yes we found water,” said Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for LCROSS. “And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
Hey, check this out. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took 3D measurements of the Apollo 14 landing site. Take that Moon landing conspiracy theorists!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
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