Keeping the Light Attitude: Kepler’s Balancing Act

Near the middle of last year, the planet-hunting satellite, Kepler, looked like it would never Keple again. On May 11, 2013, the second of Kepler’s four reaction wheels went out, which made precision pointing, a requirement for Kepler’s scientific mission, nearly impossible. Some of this site’s posts have covered Kepler’s calls for ideas about how to use […]

Spacesuits Through The Years

Special/extreme clothing supplier REI has nothing on spacesuits. Whether US, Soviet, Russian, or Chinese; whether used for space-walks, shuttle flights, capsules, or moon-walks; whether they looked like flight suits, robots, or Fat Tron, spacesuits are important to the people who wear them while working. Space.com has an excellent picture gallery of spacesuits from different spacefaring countries throughout the […]

DIY Space: More NASA Space Kits

NASA and the website Littlebits.cc are working together to get an actual working “space kit” out to the public. The kit, which costs $189, can be used to build all sorts of projects (at least 10, according to the website). Do you want to build an International Space Station replica? This kit will help you do […]

The 30th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs

In about a week, the Space Foundation will be pulling out all stops to host a lot of companies and organizations interested in space, space operations, launch, and more. The event is the 30th Space Symposium here in Colorado Springs. The venue is the Broadmoor Hotel and Resort. Check-in starts next Sunday evening at 1600. Go […]

Space, Transparency, and MH370

The Atlantic’s Ari Schulman has a terrific explanation regarding Inmarsat’s analysis of the “pings” their geostationary satellite received from Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Of more interest, the article also talks about why Inmarsat’s analysis may be incorrect. There are some puzzling problems with the data Inmarsat produced. The “ping” doppler values appear to be positive, […]