Almost batting a thousand–the contribution of Kepler (and others)

There have been a few posts on TMSB regarding the Kepler satellite and reaction wheel issues affecting it. But all that planet-hunting, the primary mission of the Kepler team, has paid off in the amount of information learned from their, and other satellites’, endeavors. You’ll learn a thing or two if you take a read […]

Troll: leaving the bridge behind

Trolls–remember when only billy goats had to deal with them?? Now humans have to worry about Trolls’ tolls, not just in snarky, crude comments, but in space operations. Actually, it’s only a select group of humans, and Troll, while it deals with space, is on Earth–specifically on ice (well, 300 kilometers (187.5 miles) from the […]

Space cloud mystery answered

Remember that picture an International Space Station astronaut shot of a mysterious cloud in space I posted about on 11 Oct.? There was a bit of guessing on what exactly that was, but it turns out all guesses were correct, for the most part. A mobile Russian intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol/SS-25, caused the cloud […]

SpaceX’s Grasshopper “leaps” higher

Yesterday, The Verge posted a neat video of SpaceX’s Grasshopper flying higher than ever. According to the article, Grasshopper flew 744 meters high, hovered, then returned safely to the launch pad. If you look closely at the video, it looks like SpaceX is using a quadcopter UAV or some such thing to film the rocket […]

International Space Station Photos of Earth

Remember the astronaut’s photo of the weird missile cloud in space I posted yesterday? That’s not the only photography object for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Cities are also interesting for them to shoot, especially at night. With an orbital period of probably an hour and a half for the space station, they […]