KickSat Kicks the Bucket

According to update #73 on the KickSat Kickstarter page, KickSat is no more. The nanosatellite had experienced a single event upset (SEU) and the Watchdog Timer reset (those terms are explained in this article, here). The result of those two events was a reset of a crucial timer that was supposed to release the smaller […]

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 […]

Spaceport America: We’re on a Road to Nowhere

“Takin’ that Ride to Nowhere, We’ll take that Ride” Why the map? It’s just to show where Spaceport America is relative to everything (or in this case, the nothing) around it. It’s pretty much in the Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. But two companies we’ve heard much about, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, are working on […]

Can Nigerian Satellites Find Kidnapped Girls?

For those people not living under a rock, there have been quite a few stories regarding the kidnapped girls in Nigeria (rock-dwellers go here to catch up). Imagine my surprise, though, at finding out that Nigeria has not just one, but two imagery satellites orbiting the Earth in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Not only that, […]