Asteroid in close pass was smaller than thought

Asteroid in close pass was smaller than thought: "On March 2, an asteroid whizzed past the Earth at a distance of just 41,000 miles -- a near miss by cosmic standards (most communications satellites orbit at a distance of about 22,300 miles from Earth). Headlines around the world proclaimed that Earth had dodged a bullet, and many mentioned that if the space rock had hit our planet ....

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(Via digg.com: Stories / Popular.)

Shuttle's Retirement Nears

Shuttle's Retirement Nears: "The STS has lofted 3 million pounds of cargo into orbit on 120+ missions since 1981. But after two catastrophic accidents, the three remaining orbiters will retire in 2010."

(Via Aviationweek: Space.)

VIDEO: Japan's Selene Captures Solar Eclipse

VIDEO: Japan's Selene Captures Solar Eclipse: "

Japan's Kaguya (Selene) lunar orbiter has produced'this very cool video of the Earth eclipsing the Sun. The event was captured by the spacecraft's HDTV camera earlier in February when the Sun, Earth and Moon lined up almost perfectly, creating this 'diamond ring' eclipse.


Click here to view the video'

As NASA explains it, 'the sequence begins with complete darkness because the Moon is in the way. Then a'thin ring of light'appears - the Earth's atmosphere backlit by the Sun. The arc expands and, just as'its ends are about to join, a sliver of the Sun's disk emerges, creating the 'diamond' on the ring.

Launched in 2007, the Kaguya mission consists of a mothership and two smaller orbiters that work together to relay data to Earth from the Moon's farside. The HDTV cameras are there not for scientific purposes, it seems,'but to share Kaguya's view with Japan's citizens - and us.

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(Via On Space.)

STS-119 Over Texas (First Orbit)

STS-119 launched tonight and we had a rare opportunity to see it flying over Texas before it went into a higher orbit and during an engine burn. At the time these photos were taken the shuttle was about over Abilene, at 72 miles up. I used a 300 mm Nikkor zoom lens with 2X converter and with a lot of processing was able to get these shots of the shuttle's belly.

In this first shot you can even make out the shape of the shuttle and which end is the pointy end, despite the blooming reflection of the setting sun.



In this next shot you can see that the orbiter has turned a bit as the nose is swinging from right to left.


This last shot was taken as the orbiter was almost out of site with the shuttle completely turned around and a green flash which I think is possibly the planned engine burn that will put the shuttle into a 150 mile high orbit.



Pretty cool huh?

-Steve

STS -119 Launches!

LIFTOFF!
Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:44:01 PM CDT

Space shuttle Discovery has cleared the launch tower! It is tracing a brilliant arc of white and orange flames through the dusky-night sky on its way to orbit.

The twin solid rocket boosters will burnout shortly and fall away as Discovery continues its climb powered by its three main engines. Once in orbit, it will take Discovery about two days to catch up to the International Space Station.

The astronauts of STS-119 are to install the last major set of solar arrays to the orbiting laboratory complex during the mission.

Japan's Koichi Wakata also will switch from the shuttle to the station crew and current station crew member Sandra Magnus will become a member of the Discovery crew.