Expedition 21 Lifts Off

The Soyuz TMA-16 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009, carrying Expedition 21 Flight Engineer Jeffrey N. Williams, Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev and Spaceflight Participant Guy Laliberté to the International Space Station.
Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The world's largest autonomous parachute

Last week released a giant parachute with a cargo of 15 000 kilograms from an airplane, five thousand feet above the ground in Arizona.
According to the American manufacturer Airborne Systems is their new Giga Fly the world's largest autonomous wing parachute. Thus, the rectangular type with air-filled cells that have replaced the old cap screens.
The new screen measuring 65 meters between the wing tips which are slightly smaller than the span of a Boeing 747.
The world's largest autonomous parachute can be loaded with 19 tons and is wide as a jumbo jet. It has now made its premiere and precisionslandade on your own.
Maximum load is 19 tonnes and maximum height it can be released from the 8 000 m above the ground. Then the distance flown to be about 22 miles.
Giga Fly is primarily intended to land military equipment. Then the high altitude are important because manburna missiles only reach aircraft at altitudes below 3 000 feet, writes The Register.
To conduct the parachute to the right place is used GPS receiver that controls two electric motors. The governing since the combined steering and brake lines, which automatically adjusts the display's itinerary.
At the premiere tour took Giga Fly soil with an appropriate speed of three meters per second, 275 meters from the planned landing site, according to a press release.

Radio control airplane up to a height of 2177 meters.

Blue Panther basement measuring approximately 1 m between the wing tips. With 100 watt motor and accumulator of capacity in 2100 milliampere hours, the plane weighs 450g. Then there is also control electronics, gps and pressure gauges on board.
The plane was built by students at Stanford University and the test flight took place on the testing ground Nasa Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert. It is not radio controlled, but must clear navigation on their own.
When the plane flies at such high altitudes is a risk of collision with the real airplanes. Would it come off course and lose contact with ground control, it will automatically make an emergency landing.
That was what happened when the students after the 2177 meter record of 11 September in the visibility of reaching 2500 meters. Gusts of wind took the plane off course so that it risked ending up in airspace reserved for the U.S. Air Force.
Emergency landing technique worked, but on landing the plane was damaged and the measured flying height of 2490 meters were not accepted as a record.

Rollout

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Russian security officers walk along the railroad tracks as the Soyuz rocket is rolled out to the launch pad Monday, Sept. 28, 2009 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz is scheduled to launch the crew of Expedition 21 and a spaceflight participant on Sept. 30, 2009.

Water Detected at High Latitudes on the Moon

Image: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ./USGS

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an instrument on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission, took this image of Earth's moon. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.
Small amounts of water were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles.
Blue shows the signature of water, green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the sun and red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene.

STS-129 Mission Information

Launch Target:
Nov. 12, 2009
Orbiter:
Atlantis
Mission Number:
STS-129
(129th space shuttle flight)
Launch Window:
10 minutes
Launch Pad:
39A
Mission Duration:
11 days
Landing Site:
KSC
Inclination/Altitude:
51.6 degrees/122 nautical miles
Primary Payload:
31st station flight (ULF3), EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 1 (ELC1), EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 2 (ELC2)
Source: NASA


Image above: On the front row are Commander Charlie Hobaugh (left) and Pilot Barry Wilmore. On the back row (from left) are astronauts Leland Melvin, Mike Foreman, Robert Satcher and Randy Bresnik, all mission specialists.
Image: NASA

Lawrence Welk Show

I love big band music and have watched Lawrence Welks TV show many times. Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was a musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, hosting The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style ca...me to be known to his large number of radio, television, and live-performance fans as "champagne music." Repeat transmission on TV every Saturday in USA.
Read more about Lawrence Welk

Old Lady Crossing the Street

Discovery's Ferry Flight Set to Start This Morning

Image above: Space shuttle Discovery was carefully placed atop its modified Boeing 747 carrier during mating operations in preparation for its ferry flight from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo: NASA/Tony Landis

Managers are giving a "go" for this morning's 9:20 a.m. EDT departure of the modified 747 carrying shuttle Discovery from Edwards Air Force Base in California. Discovery's "pathfinder" support aircraft will take off about 9 a.m.
Teams met at 7 a.m., to confirm Discovery's readiness for the ferry flight and evaluate weather. Conditions in the southern United States have improved and are favorable for the 2,500 mile trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first leg of the journey will take Discovery piggybacked on the 747, known as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, to the Rick Husband International Airport in Amarillo, Texas.
Teams will evaluate the weather again once they're in Amarillo to determine the next refueling stop. Their objective is to get to Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana this afternoon where they will stay overnight.
Managers plan to have Discovery back at Kennedy on Monday.
Source: NASA

Crew, Discovery 'Great' After Landing

Photo: Jim Ross
Space shuttle Discovery touched down at Edwards Air Force Base In California on Friday to end a 14-day mission to the International Space Station dedicated to outfitting the orbital laboratory with new experiments, science equipment, supplies and other gear the six people living on the station will need. Unacceptable weather conditions at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Thursday and Friday forced the detour by Discovery to the West Coast.
"We're very happy to be back on land here in California," STS-128 Commander Rick "C.J." Sturckow said after the astronauts got off the shuttle and surveyed their craft. "It was a great mission and we just want to thank everybody for their support."The crew of seven astronauts, including former station resident Tim Kopra, will fly to their training base at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. Meanwhile, technicians at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, adjacent to Edwards, will take about a week to get the spacecraft ready for its cross-country flight back to Kennedy atop a modified 747.
Source: NASA

STS-128 Landing

Photo: NASA
Space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 10. Landing opportunities are available at 7:05 p.m. and 8:42 p.m. EDT. Join us right here for landing coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. and originating from Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility for all the milestones leading to touchdown.

NOTE: All times are posted in Eastern. Timestamps appear in your local time.

Spacewalk

Photo: NASA
European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang is visible in the reflection of NASA astronaut Danny Olivas's helmet visor during this, the STS-128 mission's third and final spacewalk.
Olivas and Fuglesang deployed the Payload Attachment System, replaced the Rate Gyro Assembly #2, installed two GPS antennae and worked to prepare for the installation of Node 3 next year.

The world's first Concorde flight simulator to open to the public has been launched.

If you want to know how it was to sit in cookpit fly the aircraft,
you can do it in a simulator at Brooklands Museum . Here is simulator which was used for education of pilots, now open open to the public.
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Technical specification >>>

Hatches Between Station and Shuttle Closed

With over a week of docked operations behind them, the astronauts and cosmonauts said their goodbyes and closed the hatches between the International Space Station and space shuttle Discovery at 11:41 p.m. EDT Monday.
Discovery is scheduled to undock from the station at 3:26 p.m. Tuesday to begin the trip back to Earth.

European Astronauts to Speak With Swedish Representatives

Image Christer Fuglesang Photo: NASA
European Space Agency astronauts Christer Fuglesang and Frank De Winne will gather in the Columbus module at 1:19 a.m. EDT Monday for a special event with representatives from Sweden. The event will air on NASA TV as they speak with former ESA astronaut Jean Francois Clervoy, Lotta Bouvain of Swedish television, Swedish Minister for Education Jan Bj�rklund, American Finnish journalist and talk show host Mark Levengood, and Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman.
The International Space Station crew is scheduled to go to bed about 3 a.m., while space shuttle Discovery’s crew heads to bed a half-hour later.

Libyan Rocket: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi designs a "safe" car

Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution (aka Muammar Gaddafi) designed a car. Called the Saroukh el-Jamahiriya (Libyan Rocket), Gaddafi's car seats five, has a 230-hp V6 and the nose and tail of a rocket. While different, it's not entirely terrible. Kinda like how the 2024 Honda Civic might look.
BBC News

Are Sunspots Disappearing?

A sunspot is an area on the Sun's surface (photosphere) that is marked by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of reduced surface temperature. They can be visible from Earth without the aid of a telescope. Although they are at temperatures of roughly 4,000–4,500 K, the contrast with the surrounding material at about 5,800 K leaves them clearly visible as dark spots, as the intensity of a heated black body (closely approximated by the photosphere) is a function of T (temperature) to the fourth power. If a sunspot were isolated from the surrounding photosphere it would be brighter than an electric arc. Short wave communacation is effected of sunspots. A low munber of sunspots are good.
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In Tandem

Image: NASA
As part the STS-128 mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Danny Olivas and Nicole Stott (right) removed an empty ammonia tank from the station's truss and temporarily stowed it on the station's robotic arm. Olivas and Stott also retrieved the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) and Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) from the Columbus laboratory module and installed them on Discovery’s payload bay for return.

Supersonic business jet Quiet Supersonic

Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI), based in Nevada, USA, is developing a supersonic aircraft called Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST). it’ll be ready for flight by 2014, and deliverable to customers by 2016. QSST (Quiet Supersonic Transport) could well be the future of high-speed passenger jets and the concept pictured above boasts some impressive figures. It promises to be 100 times quieter than the Concorde with a range of over 4000 nautical miles and a top speed of Mach 1.8, or 1,188 miles per hour. Check out the official site for more Information.