Quick Hit: Endeavour Crew Ready To Head Back Home

 

By: Syeed

After a successful 10 day mission the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew said their goodbyes and are ready to head back home.

During their 10 day’s docked to the ISS (10 days 23 hours and 45 minutes to be exact) Endeavour’s crew made four spacewalks to install new components on the space station as well as perform some maintenance.  Including a Boom Assembly that marked the completion of the U.S Orbital Segment of the station.

One of the more interesting things the crew installed is the $2 Billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 , an experiment module designed to measure cosmic rays and help particle physicists search for all types of weird matter they can’t see with current instrumentation. Scientist are hoping the AMS-02 will shed some light on dark-matter and anti-matter as well as help with understanding the formation of the universe.

So that’s that, the 134th and final mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour is almost over, the crew will be landing this Wednesday June 1st at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ISS Commander Andrei Boriseinko wished the crew a soft landing in his goodbye, and I wish them the same.

Here’s an interview with the crew from PBS:

Related Stuffs:

• Source: The Telegraph
• NASA: Endeavour Page

Endeavour Launch Introduces New Mini Spacecraft To Space

By: Syeed

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that the Space Shuttle Endeavour brought some pretty interesting new tiny space crafts with it as it blasted off into space today.

The mini space crafts come courtesy of Cornell University, who’s Mason Peck headed up the team responsible for creating he little satellites. Which are being called ‘Sprite Spacecraft.’ The sprites are smaller and thinner than a US dime, they’re meant to spend the next few years in space and then return to earth with their data.

Here’s a bit taken from Cornell’s webpage on the craft:

“In collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, we've developed our first prototype, dubbed "Sprite". Sprite uses a multi-chip module architecture to achieve a form factor of 2cm x 2cm x 2mm. Using matched filtering techniques, it can close a communications link from a 500km orbit. “

So basically what the Sprites are meant to do is mimic space dust so that they can travel huge distances without fuel in order to collect real-time information about space. Peck envisions these little sprite spacecraft launching in waves alongside other larger space shuttles in future missions.

Related Stuffs:

• Source: L.A. Times
• Official: Cornell University

NASA Plans to Launch Endeavour Shuttle April 29

NASA confirmed their plans to launch the space shuttle Endeavour on April 29th. The decision came after a flight readiness review meeting at Kennedy space center.

The pan is for a 14-day mission that will be known as STS-134 and will be manned by a six-member crew that includes five Americans and one Italian astronaut. The crew will be commanded by Mark Kelly whose wife Gabrielle Giffords is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, despite her recovery pain and discomfort  Mrs. Giffords is expected to attend the launch. Besides Kelly the crew will include Greg H. Johnson, Andrew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Robert Vittori.

The plan is for the crew to deliver a particle physics detector known as the Alpha Spectrometer-2 (AMS) which has been designed “to measure cosmic rays to search for various types of unusual matter, such as dark matter and antimatter” according to NASA.

STS-134 will also include 4 spacewalks to do maintence and install new components, it will include the last spacewalk by a U.S shuttle crew at the orbiting lab.

 

• By: syeed@techsual.com
• Source: Google
• NASA: STS-134 Mission Page

Poyekhali! Today Marks the 50 Year Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s Space Flight

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man to ever orbit the earth and today, on the 50th anniversary the whole world celebrates.

Poyekhali! or Lets Go!, in English were the last words the 27 year old cosmonaut shouted before his triumphet blast off into space on April 12th 1961. Gagarin’s 108 minuet flight began that day at 7:08 GMT and ended when Gagarin touched down in a farm where he was greeted by a farmer who offered him bread and milk.

Christopher Riley released a YouTube video (you can see it below) that is a re-creation of Gagarin’s first flight using footage shot from the international space station synched with the original audio from the flight.

Be warned the video is over 90 minuets so make sure you got plenty of time to spare, maybe grab some popcorn, sit back and invite some lucky lady over for a night of full on space geekery.

Google is also paying homage by changing their search page picture to this:

 

So remember today as you go about your day, to give a thought to one of humanities bravest persons. No questions others came after, but you have to respect a man who was willing to risk his own life at such a young age to further the advancement of space exploration.

So Spasiba to Mr. Gagarin, for having such a fearless spirit. Now break out the vodka, let’s celebrate!

Source: The Register