Video Compilation showcases all 135 Space Shuttle Launches

Gone but not forgotten, NASA’s space shuttle program easily ranks as one of the crowning achievements of mankind.  Relieve all the majesty of this monumental program from STS-1 to STS-135 with YouTuber lunarmodule5’s fantastic video montage from 1981 to 2011.

Want to Believe? Interviews With British Government UFO Specialist Nick Pope

As we’ve examined before, the hype train for mass media productions can lead to creation of interesting and thought provoking productions in their own right.

2K Games has been hitting the media circuits lately in support of their newest game, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. The game is a strategic, 3rd person shooter set in the paranoid laden1960s suddenly faced with an alien invasion. Not content to trot out the regular stable of game producers and PR wranglers, 2K has enlisted the company of one Mr. Nick Pope for the tour.

While Nick is currently a freelance journalist and media commentator, it is his ties to secret government organizations investigating potential alien contact that got him on board. Nick was employed by the British Government’s Ministry of Defense from 1985 to 2006. In 1991, he was transferred to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a. His duty? Investigating reports of Unidentified Flying Objects.

IGN UK also interviewed Mr. Pope regarding his time with the MoD. The interview starts at the 21 minute mark.

 

Have be been visited by extraterrestrial entities? Nick’s answer is… yes. And we need to begin preparing a global response. Like forming XCOM.

Video: Curiosity Mars Rover’s First Year of Wandering the Red Planet

Guess who enjoys long walks on the beach, collecting rocks, traveling, and just turned one year old? That’s right, it’s been a whole year since NASA’s revolutionary lil’ remote-controlled rover Curiosity landed on Mars. To celebrate NASA has compiled this two-minute video montage of of our favorite little eyes on another sky as journeyed where no man has gone before.

So what do you do when you’re working an average distance of 225 million kilometers from home on your birthday? You forlornly sing Happy Birthday to yourself, of course.

Japanese Robonaut Kirobo Voyages to ISS on a Quest to Keep Humans Company

On Sunday, August 4th, the newest member of the International Space Station blasted off from Tanegashima Space Center.

As opposed to the usual bevy of scientists conducting experiments in microgravity, Kirobo’s mission is to chat up the squishier members of the crew. Measuring less than 14” tall, Kirobo is part of the Kibo Robot Project. The project’s ultimate goal is “To help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative.” They explain that, “Nowadays, more and more people are living alone. It’s not just the elderly – with today's changing lifestyles, it’s people of all ages.” The Kibo Project aims to create a small, mechanical companion for such people.

In an act of indignation that will surely become a rallying call of mechanamen everywhere during the Robopocalyse of 2525, Kirobo traveled to the ISS via a cargo transfer vehicle and will remain packed away until the experiment’s start in November when fleshy astronaut Koichi Wakata arrives.

Hands On With NASA’s Robonaut

CNet’s Always On went hands on with NASA recently turned on hands of their robotic astronaut.

Kepler Space Telescope May Be Busted, But The Mission Will Go On

Last Tuesday NASA reported a failure of the reaction wheel number four onboard the Kepler Space Telescope. Sadly, this is the second of Kepler’s four reaction wheels used to keep the craft properly oriented to have failed. Wheel number two called it quits back in July 2012. While Kepler was able to maintain its orientation around the sun in the search for new exoplanets with only three wheels properly functioning, it is unlikely that the brave eye above the sky will be able to keep pointed in the same direction long enough to continue its mission of high-precision photometry. Currently Kepler is ‘parked’ in a “Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode” in orbit around the sun, much too far and dangerous for astronauts to reach and repair.

NASA hasn’t given up on the little guy yet. The spacecraft is stable and safe. Kept in Safe Mode, the telescope has enough fuel to last for years. Engineers are trying a number of possible software solutions, transmitted via an X-band communication downlink, to fix the error. One possibility is that of a hybrid operational state that would use thrusters in conjunction with the two working reaction wheels to control the craft. There is also some hope that the busted wheel two will come back to life again following a reset of the telescope’s systems. It is possible that wheel two didn’t function due to a lack of lubrication that may have finally settled into the correct spots. Charlie Sobeck of NASA’s Ames Research Center also has a backup plan, “Like with any stuck wheel that you might be familiar with on the ground, we can try jiggling it. We can try commanding it back and forth in both directions. We can try forcing it through whatever the resistance is that's holding it up.”

Refueling In Space | Out Of This World Weekly

Refueling on Earth is something that we all have to deal with.  Pull up to the gas station, insert pump, and fuel up the car until you get a full tank.  Spacecraft on Earth refuel in a very similar way, when they are on the launch pad, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are commonly pumped into rocket fuel tanks just before takeoff.  These super cold gases are loaded just before takeoff because they will turn from a liquid to a gas.  As they naturally warm up and simply boil off the surface of the liquid, they are vented so that pressure in the tanks doesn’t become so great that they burst.  Most of this propellant is used up on launch because it is very hard to keep these freezing cold liquids at low temperature in outer space for long periods of time.  This ability to keep liquified gases cold would greatly enhance our ability to reach the outer solar system as well as decrease the amount of time needed to reach closer objectives.  

Current Commercial Spaceflight | Out Of This World Weekly

After the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, America’s hopes for spaceflight were put into the hands of commercial spaceflight.  The idea was to fund competing corporations so that they could handle orbital space operations and free up NASA for other tasks like planetary probes, robotic exploration, and even manned lights to other planets like Mars.  This would mean that NASA would be working on a new rocket, the SLS project, and not just abandoning manned spaceflight altogether.  This SLS rocket would be designed for deep space flight to the Moon, asteroids, and beyond.  Since this would be a extremely large and powerful rocket, low Earth orbit missions to the I.S.S. wouldn’t be a priority, as smaller rockets could do that job at much less cost.  So the corporations received their government funding and after a series of trials to make sure that they were meeting their goals, they are showing that they have what it takes to take care of everything in Low Earth Orbit.

Gravitational Waves | Out Of This World Weekly

The universe can be a strange place and today that means two stars orbiting each other very close have been observed to give off waves of gravity.  One of these stars is a extremely dense and rapidly spinning neutron star which is very capable of bending the local space around it.  The gravity on this star is about 300 billion times stronger than here on Earth and it spins very rapidly at 25 times per second.  The other star is an old white dwarf star caught by the neutron star’s extreme gravity and is so close, that it orbits once every 2.5 hours.  Together, these two stars caught in their gravitational dance are warping and twisting spacetime around them in a very precise manner which confirms Einstein’s theories about general relativity.  A predicted loss of a small amount of the energy in this system was to have been caused by ripples in space called gravitational waves.  Sure enough, no less than six telescopes have confirmed this loss of the miniscule 8 millionths of a second per year of the orbital period of the white dwarf due to gravitational waves radiating energy out of the system. 

Kepler Finds 3 Earth Sized Planets In Habitable Zones | Out Of This World Weekly

The Kepler space telescope has been finding planets orbiting other stars for a while now, finding 2,712 candidates and 851 confirmed planets.   While many of these planets are Neptune sized and above, the number of approximately Earth sized planets in their star’s habitable zones have been increasing.  This week, 3 more Earth sized planets have been found in the habitable zones around 2 Stars.  One star, Kepler-62, has 2 Earth sized planets named Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f and the Star Kepler-69 has another Earth sized planet named Kepler-69c.  These three planets join 8 more planets that are of reasonable size and located in the habitable zones of their stars.  Kepler-62e is now tied with the unconfirmed Gliese 581g as the most Earthlike planet that has been found to date.  As more and more planets are found, we are continually reworking our understanding of what kinds of planets are likely to be found in other solar systems. 

More Mysteries About Saturn’s Rings Uncovered | Out Of This World Weekly

Since 1610, Saturn’s rings have held a special wonder for those that have viewed them.  These 14 rings, which are mostly composed of frozen water with only small traces of dirt, can be anywhere from 10 meters to kilometers thick and have been found to have their own extremely thin atmosphere of Hydrogen and Oxygen.  Now these rings are thought to rain down on Saturn, causing effects on the planet itself.  Evidence of this was found in the 80’s when the Voyager space probes passed Saturn and noticed that there were a few dark bands going around Saturn.  Recently in 2011, scientists observed the planet in near-infrared wavelengths with the W.M Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and saw these same distinctive bands but only at particular latitudes.  It turns out that these latitudes correspond with both the rings and Saturn’s magnetosphere. 

7th Grader Launches Hello Kitty into Space

Lauren Rojas totally ruined the grading curve of her seventh grade class at Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, California. When the class science project regarding the effects of altitude on temperature and pressure was handed out, Lauren went way, way over the top and launched her favorite feline to edge of Earth’s atmosphere dangling on the end of a high-altitude balloon.

The purrfectly pretty catonaut soared over 93,000 feet to edge of our atmosphere before her balloon, quite literally, burst. Unfazed, Hello Kitty began her glorious decent back to terra firma, where, in true cat style, she became stuck 50 feet up a tree. A local arborist was called for rescue and capsule, camera, and Kitty were successfully recovered.

Space Spectrometer May Have Found Dark Matter | Out Of This World Weekly

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer riding on the I.S.S. might just have found the first clues about Dark Matter.  This $1.6 billion particle detector has been counting incoming particles emanating from space for two years now and scientists are excited by the data which they have been analyzing.  It appears that there are far more energetic positrons, the anti-matter version of electrons, zipping around in space than previously thought.  It is difficult to explain why these particles are as abundant as they are with current methods, with the only possibility being that they are a temporary phenomenon caused by a pulsar throwing large amounts of electromagnetic radiation in our direction.  Yet it is theorized by scientists trying to find Dark Matter that these positrons could be formed by weakly interacting massive particles of Dark Matter colliding and annihilating each other.  Not enough data has been collected to definitively prove anything yet but the data is high quality and this experiment will continue for another 18 years.

Sailing Through Space | Out Of This World Weekly

The concept of a solar sail was introduced when astronomers first noticed in 1610 that solar wind caused the tails of comets to blow away from the Sun.  Since then, many have dreamed of being able to sail through space using the solar wind as propulsion.  In fact, this technology has been successfully used to propel craft between planets.  In 2010, Japan launched the Ikaros probe to test solar sail technology on a trip to Venus.  It did this successfully and Japan is planning on launching another sail to Jupiter and the Trojan Asteroids late in this decade.  NASA is also trying to get in on this propellant less technology, testing a small sail in orbit for a limited time in 2011.  After NASA did confirm that this technology is feasible, they thought up their next solar sail project:  Project Sunjammer.  As early as 2014, this large scale solar sail project is set to fly through interplanetary space to test more advanced control schemes, attitude control, and sail stability to further prove the technology. 

Planck Mission Gives New Insights Into Universe | Out Of This World Weekly

The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) was given off when the universe was only 379,000 years old and can be seen coming from all directions in the sky.  Study of the CMB allows us to look back in time to that era to determine the characteristics of that long past universe.  This study has allowed us to determine such things as the age of the universe since the big bang, amounts of Matter, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy, temperature of the early universe, and variations of density of matter in the universe.  The ESA’s Planck mission expands on the previous COBE and WMAP missions with an increased sensitivity and thus greater resolution picture of the early universe.  While the new data isn’t groundbreaking, it does confirm and refine previous estimates with a higher degree of precision that was not available until now and maybe that is the most interesting news – that we have been on the right track all along. 

Dust Motion On Non-Atmospheric Bodies | Out Of This World Weekly

We all know that The Moon and Asteroids are covered in dust, dirt and tiny bits of matter but recently, a new way of explaining how all this dust gets around has been proposed.  Research conducted at NASA has shown that dust moves around on the surface of the Moon without the help of any wind, atmosphere, or even air to blow it around.  When we look at a full Moon, there aren’t many shadows because the Sun is directly above the surface, resulting in very little shadows on the surface.  However, when the Moon appears to us as a crescent or half-Moon there are large portions of the Moon that are covered in a mixture of both shadow and light.  It is the interaction between the dust particles in the shadow and the light that makes all of the difference. 

A Glimpse Into Europa’s Oceans | Out Of This World Weekly

Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has long been a point of interest in our solar system.  Europa is surrounded by an ocean made of water that is thought to be about 60 miles deep with an ice crust on the surface that is anywhere from a mile or two thick to 10 to 20 miles thick, depending on which theory you subscribe to.  Studying this ocean has long been a dream of many scientists, mostly because of the idea that where you find liquid water, you may very well find life – as water is a key component in all life on Earth.  Recently researchers have found that there may be a chemical exchange between the ocean and the surface, showing that the water from the subsurface ocean does work its way to the surface and vice-versa.  Exchanges between the surface and the ocean would be an important way of exchanging energy and material to enrich Europa’s oceans to make them more hospitable for life. 

SpaceX Launches 2nd Resupply Mission To I.S.S. | Out Of This World Weekly

The progress of commercial spaceflight advances as SpaceX had a successful launch of their Dragon Resupply Capsule to the International Space Station on a Falcon 9 Rocket.  The Dragon Capsule did suffer a temporary loss of 3 of the 4 control thrusters upon entry to orbit, which seemed to correct itself within a short time.  No damage was taken from the failure other than the loss of one day to re-adjust the orbit so that it could meet the Space Station as intended.  This is another bug like the last Falcon 9 flight, which shut down 1 of 9 main engines due to a undetected “Material Flaw” in that engine’s jacket.  That flaw did not cause a mission failure as the Falcon 9 was designed to achieve orbit with only 8 of 9 operational engines.  Hopefully like that minor problem, SpaceX will be able to learn from the experience and further increase their operational reliability.  SpaceX is so far the only private company that has been able to re-supply the space station, working off a $1.6 billion for 12 missions contract signed with NASA to take over space shuttle re-supply missions. 

The Sky Is Falling | Out Of This World Weekly

Everyone that I know has heard of the meteorite that hit near Chelyabinsk, Russia.  Objects from space attacking Earth are apparently some sort of super-gossip.  Like any other type of gossip, facts can get distorted and overblown.  Is the sky falling to the point that we should run for the nearest shelter or is this event commonplace on the time scale of the Earth?  Let’s start out with some things that we know.  NASA has updated the projected size of the meteor from 49ft (15m) to 55ft (17m) and from 7,000 to 10,000 tons.  It was believed to enter the atmosphere 6,500 miles away above Alaska travelling at 33,000mph and took 32 seconds for it to disintegrate in Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 13 to 31 miles above the surface, causing an explosion equivalent to a 500 kiloton nuclear warhead.  Approximately 1,200 people were injured, mostly from the glass and other damage to over 4,000 buildings that was caused by the shockwave of the explosion.   This type of event is considered a once in a hundred year event and the largest since the 130ft (40m) Tunguska meteorite event which occurred in Russia in 1908. 

Meteor Explosion Rocks Russia | Weekend Watchlist

Friday morning people had their eyes on a large astral body designated 2012 DA14 which was heading for a near Earth trajectory. Although passing a mere 18,000 kilometers from our planet, the 150ft. meteorite was not expected to pose any significant threat. And, in fact, it didn’t.

What no one predicted was a much smaller, unrelated meteor (Bolide, or Fireball, more accurately), estimated at 45 feet in diameter with a mass of 40 tons, would enter Earth’s atmosphere and break apart in a massive explosion only 30km above the Chelyabinsk region in Russia with a force estimated at three-hundred kilotons.

The Russian Interior Ministry states there have been over one-thousand injuries, most not serious and only 50 people remain hospitalized. Not a single related fatality has been reported. 3,000 buildings have sustained damage, mostly from having their windows blown out during the shockwave. Damage is estimated at 1 billion Russian Rubles, or $33 million USD. Governor Mikhail Yurevich states, “That’s not much for such an accident.” It is estimated that 30% of the damaged windows have already been replaced.

Our first video is a compilation of footage Russia Today collected from various dashboard cameras that captured footage of the event.