brainwagon

It was reported that an Iridium satellite and an “non-functional Russian satellite” collided yesterday. I was curious, so I did a bit of digging, and found out that NASA had reported that it was Iridium 33 and COSMOS-2251. A bit more work uncovered orbital elements for both objects, so I was able to plug in […]

The Phoenix probe to Mars should land today around 6:00EDT. It’s a lander designed to dig in the Martian top soil to look for sub surface ice that the Mars Observer’s data indicates is just below the surface in the northern polar regions. It will subject this soil and ice mixture to a battery of […]

Now that I have a DC power converter in my car, I am able to run some experiments. Last night I left my radio in my car and hooked up to my mag mount roof antenna, tuned to 145.825Mhz, the frequency which has been designated for use by the APRS system via satellites. NO-44, NO-61 […]

Phil Plait reminds us that in about three hours, around 10:30PST, the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter will fire a 27 minute retro burn and enter a highly elliptical orbit of Mars. Over the next several months, it will dip into the Martian atmosphere, aerobraking to reduce speed and circularize its orbit. Then, serious science and imaging […]

Need some fresh wallpaper for your computer Desktop? Try checking out NASA’s top 10 Pictures, including the rather nice pictures of an active lava flow on Io pictured to the right. Cool stuff. [tags]NASA,Space[/tags]

I’ve got Realplayer fired up and watching NASA TV and the impending launch of the Atlas V launch vehicle that will carry the NASA New Horizons probe. They are currently holding at T minus 4 minutes, and have rescheduled to a new launch window at 1:45EST. Apparently there are some issues with wind gusting above […]