A Pilot’s Blog
A blog about aviation, aviation news, and space.

The 3rd flight of SpaceX’s “Falcon 1″ rocket is scheduled to happen in about 30 minutes. This is the first customer cargo flight, and it’s carrying three pieces of equipment, including a satellite for the US Government.

You can watch a live feed here and see the mission status page from SpaceFlightNow here.

Update @ 7:56p: It appears that the launch has been delayed for some reason. The chatter from Mission Control indicates that the rocket is currently being defueled. Not sure what’s going on.

Update @ 9:10p: The countdown has been reset to 51 minutes and has resumed!

Update @ 11:15p: The launch occurred and seemed to be going normally about thirty minutes ago when the live feed from the rocket suddenly cut out and the SpaceX webcast was abruptly halted with word that there “was an anomaly”. I’m afraid the rocket didn’t make it to orbit. That’s very unfortunate, but hopefully it will have provided some good data to the launch team so that whatever happened can be corrected for the next launch. Sorry guys.

Related: Second Launch of “Falcon 1″ A Partial Success

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July, 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.

These words were on the Apollo 11 LEM Plaque as read by Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969 from the Sea of Tranquility on the Lunar surface.

In memory of all the brave men of the early space program who made the journey first to Earth orbit, and then to the Moon…and those who weren’t able to.

This afternoon in pristine weather the astronauts of STS-124 blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Space Shuttle Discovery on their way to meet up with the ISS and install the Kibo laboratory module. Best of luck to the combined crews of STS-124 and ISS Expedition 17!

Also, major congratulations are in order for NASA, JPL, and the University of Arizona for last weeks picture-perfect landing of the Phoenix lander on the Mars. What a great week for NASA and space exploration!

Update (2/20): Overcast. Bleh.

If you’re under cloudless skies this coming week be sure to take a look outside between 8 and 9 pm (Central Time) on Wednesday, February 20th. There is expected to be a beautiful total lunar eclipse which will be visible over all of the Americas. If you miss this one, you won’t have another chance until 2010.

The eclipse will begin when the moon enters the faint outer portion, or penumbra of the Earth’s shadow. The penumbra, however, is all but invisible to the eye until the moon becomes deeply immersed in it. Sharp-eyed viewers may get their first glimpse of the penumbra as a delicate shading on the left part of the moon’s disk about 20 minutes before the start of the partial eclipse (when the round edge of the central shadow or umbra, first touches the moon’s left edge). During the partial eclipse, the penumbra should be readily visible as a dusky border to the dark umbral shadow.

The moon will enter Earth’s much darker umbral shadow at 1:43 on Feb. 21 by Greenwich or Universal time, which is 8:43 p.m. on Feb. 20 in the Eastern time zone, 7:43 p.m. Central time, 6:43 p.m. Mountain time and 5:43 p.m. Pacific time.

Seventy-eight minutes later the moon is entirely within the shadow, and sails on within it for 51 minutes (about average for a total lunar eclipse), until it begins to find its way out at the lower left (southeastern) edge.

The moon be completely free of the umbra by 9:09 p.m. Pacific time or 12:09 a.m. (Feb. 21) Eastern time.

The vaguer shading of the inner penumbra can continue to be readily detected for perhaps another 20 minutes or so after the end of umbral eclipse. Thus, the whole experience ends toward 12:30 a.m. for the East (with the re-brightened moon now sloping down along the high arc it describes across the sky), or during the mid-evening hours for the West.

I was able to see the partial eclipse that occurred in March, and I hope that the weather will cooperate and I will be fortunate enough to see this one. The universe truly is a wonderful and beautiful thing.

Related: Lunar Eclipse

Michael Anderson - David Brown - Kalpana Chawla - Laurel Clark - Rick Husband - William McCool - Ilan Ramon

In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”

The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
- President George W. Bush, February 1, 2003

We will never forget you or your sacrifice.

Gregory Jarvis - Christa McAuliffe - Ronald McNair - Ellison Onizuka - Judith Resnik - Dick Scobee - Michael J. Smith

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
- President Ronald Reagan, January 28, 1986

We will never forget you or your sacrifice.

On November 3, 1957, nearly one month after the successful launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union surprised the world again by launching the first animal into space. That animal, a small dog named Laika, paved the way for the eventuality of human spaceflight by showing that a living thing could be launched into space and survive. Unfortunately, she only survived a short while once in orbit - only a few hours, compared to the several days that the Soviet government originally reported. So today we remember and honor Laika, and all of the animals that have followed her, for their sacrifices - albeit unwittingly.

Hot on the heels of last month’s 38th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, Arizona State University is working with NASA to digitize all of the original Apollo films.

TEMPE, Ariz. - Nearly 40 years after man first walked on the Moon, the complete lunar photographic record from the Apollo project will be accessible to both researchers and the general public on the Internet. A new digital archive - created through a collaboration between Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston - is making available high-resolution scans of original Apollo flight films. They are available to browse or download at: http://apollo.sese.asu.edu.

Very, very awesome if you ask me.

On this date, 38 years ago, man first set foot upon the moon.

ARMSTRONG:
I’m at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder. Down there, it’s very fine.

ARMSTRONG:
I’m going to step off the LM now.

ARMSTRONG:
That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.

(Transcript blurb courtesy of NASA.)

I was doing some WIkipedia surfing today after seeking out information on the current Space Shuttle mission (STS-117) and I came across what will apparently be the program that succeeds the Space Shuttles when they are retired within the next decade. I wasn’t yet aware that NASA had “finalized” on the next generation systems, but it appears they may have done so. That program is called Project Constellation and it is designed to both meet our current needs for orbital research and International Space Station participation, as well as allow us to return to the Moon in the coming years. I was extremely interested to read all of the current information and plans for the future of our space travel.

There are four primary areas of this project: the crew module, launch vehicles, Earth departure stage system, and the lunar lander.

The crew module is called Orion and will function much like the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules of old. It will transport between four and six astronauts and will return to Earth via parachute, touching-down on land as opposed to the water recoveries of its predecessors.

The launch vehicles are currently referred to as Ares I and Ares V and each will serve different roles. Ares I will be the primary launch system for the Orion modules (manned missions) and utilizes solid rocket booster technology derived from the Space Shuttle SRB system. Ares V will be primarily used for launching cargo (unmanned missions) into space. This specialization of task will allow each to be much more versatile in serving the needs of the US space program. However, NASA is still considering using a single vehicle for all Constellation missions, which if chosen, would be the Ares IV.

The Earth departure stage is a specialized piece of the system which will be used to send mankind back to the moon. Instead of carrying all of the force needed to propel the capsule to the Moon in a single rocket, as in the Saturn V days, the Constellation project would instead carry out Moon landing missions in two stages. First, the module would launch from Earth using either the Ares I or Ares IV launch vehicle. Then, the Earth departure stage would be launched soon afterwards. The two would dock in orbit, and the Earth departure stage would provide the primary propulsion to get the module to escape velocity and send it to the Moon.

And finally, the lunar lander - officially called the Lunar Surface Access Module is probably my most favorite. This vehicle, which is nearly identical to the Lunar Module of the Apollo missions, will serve as the landing vehicle for the planned Moon missions. It will allow the astronauts to land on the Lunar surface, perform “moonwalks”, and then boost them back into orbit to return to the crew module and return safely to Earth. Marvelous technology.

After reading about these new systems I found myself more interested than ever in the space program. It will be several years before any of them are ready for testing and eventual use, but I can hardly wait!