There's a rocket launching at NASA in a few days - and my name is on it. Well, mine and about a quarter-million others...

It's the Phoenix Lander mission to Mars. It's scheduled to launch August 3rd, but of course delays can always occur, so we can only wait and see. And Mars is notorious for eating spacecraft - it's a bit like Charlie Brown's kite-eating trees - so we'll have to wait another 9 months after launch to see how the landing works out.

This one will go where no Mars lander has gone before, near the Martian north pole. It's mission - dig into the surface, seek out water, and - possibly - new life, if the on-board instruments can detect any. No civilizations - any little green living things will be cellular, at best.

I was lucky enough to catch the launch of the Opportunity rover several years ago. If I time my break right at work and the sky is clear between Mount Dora and the Cape, I may see this one too. If not, I'm off when the Shuttle is scheduled to launch 4 days later, so I'll see that.

Long before the launch, The Planetary Society invited the public to submit names for inclusion on a DVD. According to the Wikipedia entry, the Phoenix DVD is made of a special silica glass that can purportedly withstand the Martian environment, lasting for hundreds (if not thousands) of years on the surface.

Went out to Lake Gertrude last night hoping to catch a glimpse of Mercury. It's only visible at certain times of the year, and finding the right combination of available time and a cloudless sky to the west is a fairly rare event. Unfortunately, as I discovered, it's too late in the season to catch it here. By the time the twilight dims enough, Mercury is already over the horizon.

But Venus is high and bright in the evening, and I snapped a photo of it over the lake with my Sidekick II. It's not a great camera, just 0.3 megapixels, but it can still produce a passable image now and then...

Seven years ago, a 56-ton rock about the size of an SUV smashed into the upper atmosphere over Canada. A brilliant fireball blazed south-southeast over the Canadian Artic, lighting up the sky over Alaska, the Northwest and Yukon territories, and British Columbia. It was not dense as meteorites go, and the rock broke up during its passage. When a few of the remaining pieces crashed into a frozen lake, 97% of the original rock had simply vaporized.

After researchers picked up the pieces at Tagish Lake, took them into the lab, and teased out their properties, they arrived at a stunning conclusion - elements in the rock were older than the solar system itself. It was, in fact, the most ancient object ever to fall in human hands.

There have been several popular accounts about the Tagish Lake find, but I dug a little deeper and found a real gem - an account of the studies conducted on the rock by David W. Mittlefehldt and others. It's a detailed, witty and engrossing examination of the lines of evidence that point to the ancient origins of the rock. A lot of it is technical and you'll encounter many unfamiliar terms - I certainly did. But it's worthwhile - a study of what, exactly, the loose stuff circling between Mars and Jupiter is made of, how it was created from a cloud of dust and gas, then transformed by heat and - surprisingly, water - to rock, metal, sulfur and organic compounds.

This particular rock came from the outer, colder regions of the asteroid belt, and embedded within are tiny diamonds formed in the shock wave of a Type II supernova. The dust of a long-dead star drifted our way and mixed with the gases around a newborn star - our Sun - and 4.6 billion years later, landed in a frozen northern lake on a cold January morning.

You can read the story of the oldest stone ever known here.

Ten years ago today, the world lost a great man - Carl Sagan.

While he was alive, I pretty much took him for granted - he'd pop up on Johnny Carson now and then....



...his books and films came out in a steady stream, and he was simply there, ever-present in the media.

Since his passing, I've had the chance to read some of his work that I hadn't read before. It is only now, in retrospect, that I fully appreciate how much he gave us. He was a tireless evangelist for science, at a time when respect for science in America was entering a steep decline. He devoted an entire book to that concern - The Demon Haunted World - and warned of the risks presented by a world driven by mysticism.

We remember Carl now after a decade without him. But one thing he did, together with his wife Ann and son Nick, may outlast the entire human race.

Carl was the creative force that drove the addition of plaques installed on Pioneer 10 and 11, and the Voyager Golden Records that were launched on Voyager 1 & 2. All four of these spacecraft are now beyond our solar system, approaching interstellar space.

It will take 40,000 years for them to reach the neighborhood of another star. Whether humanity will be around that long remains to be seen.

However it turns out for us, at least our message to the stars was delivered by people worthy of the task. With the same love evident in this photo of Carl & Ann, the human spirit was hurled to the cosmos, where it will drift long beyond our time.

Here's my first attempt, filmed this morning, to capture a Shuttle launch on video. With the neccesary format conversions, most of what detail existed was lost, but it does give you some idea of what a launch looks like 65 miles east-northeast from the pad.





The Visual Satellite Observer's website has a graphic that shows the standard ground - or rather, overwater - track to match orbit with the International Space Station. This is the path all subsequent Shuttle missions will be taking, as they're all slated to go to the ISS. There's some talk about one more mission to service the Hubble Telescope, but so far it's just talk.

Mom shot this photo of Discovery's recent launch in Vero Beach, where I once lived. Vero is 50 miles south of the Cape, and yet you can still see the boosters fall off when the Shuttle is 32 miles up and a good ways downrange. Scenes like this used to be common along the Space Coast.

Although it appears the Shuttle is trending south from the launchpad, it's actually heading out east over the Atlantic.

The night launches were spectacular, but we won't be seeing any more Shuttles going up at night. For that, we'll have to wait for the next generation, the newly named Ares V.

From this evening, between 7:20 and 8:15 p.m.:

Cosmos 1005 rocket stage. It was used to launch a Soviet-era spy satellite in 1978.

Ground Track (click on image for pass details.)



The highlighted circle is the region where the satellite is at least 10° above the horizon. The size of the circle depends on the height of the satellite.

Solid part of orbit shows where the satellite is sunlit, and the dashed part where it is in the Earth's shadow and invisible.

The arrow shows direction of satellite movement and the path is marked by ground times during the pass.

Tropical Rain Measuring Mission, a joint US/Japanese environmental satellite launched from Japan in late November '97. There's a TRMM website.

Ground Track:



The Hubble Space Telescope is my favorite - I've easily viewed it dozens of times, and one of my aims is eventually photograph a pass through my own telescope. It was launched in 1990 by the space shuttle Discovery.

Ground Track:



You can get details of visible satellite passes in your own area at Heavens Above.

1/27/06 - 8:00pm - 9:20pm EST

Saturn

Saturnian Moons
Titan
Rhea
Dione



M44 - Beehive Cluster
Distance: ~600 light-years

38 Lyncis (double star)
Distance: 121.93 light-years
Magnitude: 3.82

48-Iota Cancri
Distance: 298.13 light-years
Magnitude: 4.03

Adhafera
Distance: 259.68 light-years
Magnitude: 3.43

Regulus
Distance: 77.49 light-years
Magnitude: 1.36

1/17/2006 9:25pm - 10:00pm

Saturn

Rise: 6:36 PM on 1/17/2006
Viewed: 9:25 PM on 1/17/2006
Set: 8:10 AM on 1/17/2006
Apparent magnitude: -0.43

Beehive Cluster
Also known as Praesepe, M44, NGC 2632
Magnitude: 3.1

Moon
Earth-Moon distance: 252,179.3 miles
Phase: 88.15%
Low on the horizon, which turned the atmosphere into a pretty effective glare filter.


1/19/2006

5:25 AM

Vega
Distance: 25.30 light-years
Magnitude: 0.03

5:34 AM

Sulafat
Distance: 634.55 light-years
Magnitude: 3.25

5:40 AM

Ring Nebula in Lyra
Planetary nebula ring with central star.
M57, NGC 6720
Constellation: Lyr
Magnitude: 9.0 (very small and faint, but distinct)

6:25 AM

Deneb
Distance: 3229.28 light-years
Magnitude: 1.25

Observer's Log, 1/12/06, 12:24 a.m.

******* 1/12/2006, 12:24 AM *******
Star
Phecda
Distance: 83.65 light-years
Magnitude: 2.41

This is the star in the bottom left corner of the Big Dipper's bowl. Three galaxies appear nearby:

Galaxy
M109
NGC 3992
Description: Elongated galaxy with bright core.
Magnitude: 9.8

Galaxy
NGC 3953
Description: Very elongated galaxy with bright core.
Magnitude: 10.1

Galaxy
NGC 4088
Description: Barred spiral galaxy structure.
Magnitude: 10.5

******* 1/12/2006, 5:30 AM *******
Star
Vega
Distance: 25.30 light-years
Magnitude: 0.03

I read a lot, and over the years I've collected many space-related books. So it's really saying something when I tell you that this is one of the best I've ever read:



I'm a big fan of books that take you to interesting places and experiences and leaves you feeling like you were there, that you'd really gone along and saw things unfold, smelled the air, felt the textures, explored a strange new environment. This book does that.

It's lavishly illustrated with photos, interspersed with anecdotes from Shuttle astronauts. They tell stories about times they were frightened, surprised, overwhelmed, awed, sick, joyous, focused, distracted...in short, they didn't just talk about space, but humanity in space. It answers the question - what does it FEEL like, being up there? Turns out, it feels different at different times, from different perspectives.

The book has stories from rookies and veterans, men and women, pilots and mission specialists, spacewalkers and scientists. It walks you through all phases of the Shuttle experience - training, launching, entering orbit, working in orbit, docking with the Hubble Space Telescope and Mir, building the International Space Station. Capturing, repairing and releasing satellites, living aboard the orbiter, Mir and the ISS. The wonder of seeing our planet from orbit - lightning storms, city lights at night, ghostly aurora, ships at sea. Re-entry and returning to earth.

Most of all, it focuses on the people who flew, how they got along or didn't, how they teased and fretted and took pride in their efforts.

The shuttle fleet is far from perfect - it has been hideously expensive, and of course there have been tragedies. This book was created before Columbia melted and shattered over Texas, but it includes reflections on the Challenger incident. Some of the stories in the book are from crewmembers who died in Columbia.

Maybe because of this, the book is available at a deep discount at Barnes & Noble - I picked it up there for $13; list price is $40. Amazon has it for $25.

The Shuttle program is scheduled to end by 2010. I suspect it will be used a few more years beyond that, but for most of the program, this book is THE chronicle of the period. If this topic interests you at all, I cannot recommend it more highly. It's a magnificent homage to one of the most remarkable engineering accomplishments of all time, and to the people who were privileged to work with it.

Update: James Oberg has written a great piece on 7 Myths About the Challenger Disaster.

I was just browsing through some old files and came across this note I sent out after seeing the Leonid meteors shortly after 9/11. It was a memorable night, and reading this again brought it all back. If you ever get a chance to experience a good meteor shower on a clear, dark night, don't let the opportunity slip by.


Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 10:03:47 -0500
To: Dave
From: DeafScribe
Subject: Fire in the Sky

That was 3 hours well spent.

I just returned from the beach. Got the bike out at 3:30, mounted the night light, added a bit of air to the front tire, and set off for the shore. It's a straightforward trip - one block over to 16th St., then follow that for about 3 miles to the ocean. There's just one hurdle - the Indian River and the bridge that vaults over it.

As much as I love my Schwinn 10-speed, it has one glaring flaw - the gearshift is old and totally unreliable. Despite the occasional adjustment, it inevitably slips back into a state where shifting gears will lock it up, jam the chain between the chainrings, and force a miserable roadside battle with an stuck chain and grease-coated hands. To avoid this fight, I leave the bike in 10th gear, which is great for keeping my legs strong, but not so fun for honking up a big bridge.

Still, it could be worse. I'm not smoking anymore, so I was able to reach the bridge top without gasping too badly. Sixteenth Street is lined with bright lights nearly the whole way, but even peering through them, I could see the meteors streaking down from the east. Beyond the lights, the conditions could not be better. The sky was crystal clear, the stars were blazing and the night was comfortably cool.

The bridge plays out to A1A, the highway that runs alongside the Florida coast. Crossing that, it's another 1/2 mile to South Beach park. I could have stopped there, and it would have been a fine choice since it's very dark, but I pushed north toward Humiston Beach. This meant a winding ride through silent streets unmolested by lights.

I turned off the bike lamp and let the stars light the way. The Big Dipper hung in the northeast, pointing the way to Polaris, the north star. The belt of Orion flew nearly overhead, escorted by Betelgeuse and Rigel, and Capella was a blazing beacon. To the east, where breezes carried the scent of the sea, bright streaks of burning dust and pebbles were flying down like psychedelic raindrops.

I reached Humiston, which was nearly deserted. An elderly couple made their way toward the boardwalk, where a smoker fired up a cigarette and three young girls chattered together, swaddled in sleeping bags. I parked the bike and locked it near Crusty's, a casual restaurant propped up on posts over the sand. Went directly down to the beach, found a dark spot, and settled back to watch the show. It was 4:30.

The Leonid meteors come from a comet, the Tempel-Tuttle comet. It's a big dirty ball of ice, a flying mountain about 2.5 miles wide. It swings around the sun every 33 years. As it passes through our neighborhood, the sun warms it and melts some of the ice. All the gravel and dust locked into the ice is released, leaving a long trail of debris in its path, much like the contrail of a jet flying through the sky.

The trail gets pushed around some by solar wind and radiation, but it mostly just hangs there in space. There's no real wind to break it up and scatter it, so the trail we're plowing into this year has been hanging around for three centuries, since Tempel-Tuttle passed through in the 1700's. The comet leaves a long half-donut of dust and gravel around the sun every time it passes through. Some years it dumps more than others, and some years we hit a denser part of it than others. This year the prediction is that we'd hit an especially dense part.

Not all meteors are created equal. Some just skim past the earth in the upper atmosphere, like a flat rock skipping over the surface of water. Some hit the earth at an angle, and some crash in head first. Some come from behind our motion around the sun, catching up to the earth, and almost float into our atmosphere.

The Leonids mostly come screaming in head first. This means they come in very, very fast. There's no sound on the ground, of course, since these are pretty small meteors and all the action is going on about 60 miles overhead.

If a fireworks show is rock and roll, then a meteor shower is understated classical symphony. It's not an in-your-face explosion of light and sound. It's more of a subtle, unpredictable rhythm, one surprise following another on a deep velvet void inlaid with fiery diamonds.

Even when there's no meteor shower expected, most nights you'll see 2 or 3 if you watch the sky for a while. The trick to seeing meteors is not to look for them. Just lie back and let your eyes relax, not seeking, not focusing on anything especially. Once you have that trick down, your side vision picks up everything in view that moves, and your eyes will dart in the direction of any movement. That way you seldom miss anything, even the really short, fast meteors.

Tonight, though, it was impossible to miss anything. At 4:30, they were appearing in a steady parade, one at a time, perhaps 2 or 3 each minute. Some were tiny and dim, some were bright and sharp. They left lines of light in varied colors and shades - red, blue, white, purple, even green. Nearly all were wicked fast, ripping by in an eyeblink. Sometimes they burned with the intensity of a welder's torch, so bright they cast shadows.

In 20 minutes' time, the parade began to moving faster. They flew down in quick bursts of 4 and 5, appearing within seconds of each other. Mixed in with Leonids were slower meteors coming from other directions. A steady stream of larger green trails were left by slow earth grazers coming from the north. Quick white wands of neon winked on and off past Orion's belt.

It's easy to imagine ancient people being awed by nights like this. They must have wondered if the very stars were falling to the earth.

By 5 a.m, the single notes of individual meteors were being replaced by whole chords appearing together. 4-5 would spray down at once, usually entering from different directions, sometimes flying in formation. Seeing 10 to 15 meteors a minute was not unusual. Anywhere you looked, a gentle celestial rain was falling. It would not have been surprising if a rock thudded into the beach and sat there, steaming, a relic possibly older than the Earth itself. Above us, fragments just as old spent their final moments of existence tortured by a sudden impact with an ocean of air, turbocharged fireflies smashing into our atmospheric windshield.

It was hypnotic, relaxing, transcendent, beautiful. Sounds like hype for a trip through a cloud of dust and gravel, but it was all that and a side of fries, too.

At 5:30, meteors were still coming fast and furious while dawn was making itself felt in a ghostly gray light over the waters. It was time to start back for home. I stood and brushed off the beach sand, thinking that many of the meteors that appeared tonight were not much larger, and not so very different, than these same grains.

It's of a piece, really, what lies out there and what we work with every day. It's all connected, a tapestry woven from elements forged in the heart of stars.

The rain of fire will return next year.

Be there.

- Kevin

11 November '01

A group of kids of all ages finally achieved something today that model rocketeers have dreamed about for decades - actually sending their model rocket into space. It was their third try, and went screaming upward at 4,200 mph to 70 miles over a northern Nevada desert. Of course, their model is pretty big - 21 feet - and having done the real thing, it's no longer a model - it's a real, live, grown-up rocket.

However, there's one aspect of their model rocketry days that hasn't changed. The rocket has returned to earth, but...they're still trying to find it.



Civilian Space eXploration Team Sends Amateur Rocket to Space

Note: This was x-posted to metro_orlando, but the instructions are general enough to be useful anywhere.

It's warm out at night again, the skies are clear, the stars are beckoning, and if you're looking at the right time and place, you can see some passing flashers and floaters. No, it's not naughty. They're satellites.

You wouldn't ordinarily think that you could see something with your naked eyes when it's six feet tall, three feet wide and 480 miles away - but actually you can, if you know where to look. Not only that, but you can do it nightly, and it doesn't cost anything. All you need to know is which way is north, the address to a website, a good watch, clear skies and a few minutes.

( Check it out if you're interested. )