Here's an updated stamp for the newly explored Pluto. Image credit: USPS
When NASA launched New Horizons back in 2006, the spacecraft payload included your traditional of “scientific instruments” and “maneuvering thrusters”. But the engineers included a collection of nine secret items as well, including ashes from Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, and few other trinkets.
Pluto US postal stamp from 1991. Credit: JHU/APL
One noteworthy addition was a 1991 US postage stamp featuring “Pluto: Not Yet Explored”. And thus, New Horizons was carrying a symbol of its own scientific inquiry, an indication that even Pluto would get the exploration treatment when it made its closest flyby on July 13, 2015.
To celebrate this exploration, the US Postal Service has announced a new series of Pluto stamps, with updated pictures of the dwarf planet and an artist’s illustration of New Horizons.
There were a bunch of space stamps released this week, including ones celebrating Star Trek, new views of the planets, and global stamps for the Moon (send a letter anywhere on Earth, but not to the Moon, strangely). Gotta collect them all!
Still looking for the perfect calendar for 2016? Don’t start the year without the new Year In Space Wall Calendar! Published in cooperation with The Planetary Society, the large-format Wall Calendar as well as the spiral-bound Desk Calendar, both feature stunning images, fascinating facts, and plenty of room for your own notes and appointments.
An artist's conception of Juno in orbit around Jupiter. image credit: NASA
2015 was an amazing year in space, as worlds such as Pluto and Ceres snapped into sharp focus. 2015 also underlined the mantra that ‘space is hard,’ as SpaceX rode the roller coaster from launch failure, to a dramatic return to flight in December, complete with a nighttime landing of its stage 1 Falcon 9 rocket back at Cape Canaveral. Continue reading “Space Stories to Watch in 2016”
View of upper dome and newly attached crew access tunnel of the first Boeing CST-100 ‘Starliner’ crew spaceship under assembly at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. This is part of the maiden Starliner crew module known as the Structural Test Article (STA) being built at Boeing’s refurbished Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) manufacturing facility at KSC. Numerous strain gauges have been installed for loads testing. Credit: Ken Kremer /kenkremer.com
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Buildup of the first of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew spaceships is ramping up at the company’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) – the new spacecraft manufacturing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
This rare overhead shot of the James Webb Space Telescope shows the nine primary flight mirrors installed on the telescope structure in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Gunn
Camping out under dark skies. Image credit and copyright: Michelle Nixon/MNixon Photography
Here it is… our year end look at upcoming events in a sky near you. We’ve been doing this “blog post that takes four months to write” now on one platform or another every year since 2009, and every year, it gets bigger and more diverse, thanks to reader input. This is not a top 10 listicle, and not a full-fledged almanac, but hopefully, something special and unique in between. And as always, some of the events listed will be seen by a large swath of humanity, while others grace the hinterlands and may well go unrecorded by human eyes. We’ll explain our reasoning for drilling down each category, and give a handy list of resources at the end.
Click on any of the graphics included for the top events for each month to enlarge.
Long exposure of launch, re-entry, and landing burns of SpaceX Falcon 9 on Dec. 21, 2015. Credit: SpaceX
Elon Musk’s dream and ultimate goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the Red Planet in the form of “A City on Mars” took a gigantic step forward with the game changing rocket landing and recovery technology vividly demonstrated by his firm’s Falcon 9 booster this past Monday, Dec. 21 – following a successful blastoff from the Florida space coast just minutes earlier on the first SpaceX launch since a catastrophic mid-air calamity six months ago.
Curiosity explores Red Planet paradise at Namib Dune during Christmas 2015 - backdropped by Mount Sharp. Curiosity took first ever self-portrait with Mastcam color camera after arriving at the lee face of Namib Dune. This photo mosaic shows a portion of the full self portrait and is stitched from Mastcam color camera raw images taken on Sol 1197, Dec. 19, 2015. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Just in time for the holidays, NASA’sCuriosity rover is celebrating Christmas 2015 at a Red Planet Paradise – spectacular “Namib Dune.” And she marked the occasion by snapping her first ever color self-portrait with the mast mounted high resolution Mastcam 34 mm camera.
This artist's concept depicts the InSight lander on Mars after the lander's robotic arm has deployed a seismometer and a heat probe directly onto the ground. InSight is the first mission dedicated to investigating the deep interior of Mars. The findings will advance understanding of how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved. NASA approved a new launch date in May 2018. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA managers have just made the difficult but unavoidable decision to scrub the planned March 2016 launch of the InSight lander, the agency’s next mission to Mars, by at least two years because of a vacuum leak that was just detected in the probes flawed seismometer instrument which cannot be fixed in time.
Long exposure of launch, re-entry, and landing burns of SpaceX Falcon 9 on Dec. 21, 2015. Credit: SpaceX
“There and back again,” said SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk after the amazing successful ‘Return to Flight’ launch of the firms Falcon 9 rocket and history making vertical return landing at Cape Canaveral, Fla, on Monday evening, Dec. 21.
For the first time in history, the first stage of a rocket blazing to orbit with a payload, separated successfully from the upper stage at high speed, turned around and then flew back to nail a successful rocket assisted upright touchdown back on the ground.
The upgraded “full thrust” SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off Monday night, Dec. 21 at 8:29 p.m. from Space Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. carrying a constellation of ORBCOMM OG2 communications satellites to low Earth orbit.
“The Falcon Has Landed!” gushed exuberant SpaceX officials during a live webcast.
Read below what some excited eyewitnesses told Universe Today.
SpaceX Falcon 9 in final seconds of descent to successful touchdown at Landing Zone 1 on Dec 21, 2015. Credit: Dawn Leek Taylor
Accompanied by multiple shocking loud sonic booms, the 156 foot tall Falcon 9 first stage separated about 3 minutes into flight and landed successfully on the ground about 10 minutes later at the SpaceX Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) complex at the Cape, some six miles south from pad 40.
The goal of SpaceX is to recover and eventually reuse the boosters in order to radically reduce the the cost of sending payloads and people to space, as often stated by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
My colleague and well known long time space photographer Julian Leek, remarked that the whole experience was fantastic!
“It was fantastic! You just would not believe the feeling,” space photographer Julian Leek told Universe Today. See his photos below.
“One of the best things I have seen since Apollo 11 liftoff!”
“It was one of the most spectacular space events I’ve seen,” said Jeff Seibert, another media photographer colleague.
“We felt like the rocket was coming down on top of us!”
Touchdown view of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Dec. 21, 2015 as seen from atop Exploration Tower. Credit: Jeff Seibert/AmericaSpace
See the dramatic landing in this SpaceX video taken from a nearby helicopter:
“Honestly it will be something I’ll always remember!” astronomy enthusiast Carol Higgins of the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society of Utica NY, told Universe Today.
“Seeing that thing falling so fast toward Earth, then the engine fire to slow it down, then watching it falling closer to the Cape – my heart was pounding so fast and hard I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me LOL!”
This morning, Dec. 22, media reps were taken on a boat trip along the Cape’s Atlantic Ocean coastline past Landing Zone 1 for a birdseye view of the Falcon 9 standing upright.
Two cranes from Beyel Bros Crane and Rigging were seen hoisting and moving the Falcon 9 first stage from the vertical to horizontal position at ‘Landing Zone 1’ according to Steven M Beyel.
Post landing Ocean View of SpaceX Falcon 9 recovered first stage the day after touchdown at Landing Zone 1 on Dec 21, 2015 being hoisted by Beyel Bros cranes. Credit: Dawn Leek Taylor
The primary mission of the Falcon 9 launch was to carry a fleet of eleven small ORBCOMM OG2 commercial communications satellites to orbit on the second of two OG2 launches. All 11 satellites were successfully deployed at an altitude of about 400 mi (620 km) above Earth.
The next generation ORBCOMM OG2 satellites provide Machine – to – Machine (M2M) messaging and Automatic Identification System (AIS) services with capabilities far beyond the OG1 series.
Here’s an expanding galley of photos and video for the Dec 21, 2015 launch and landing at Cape Canaveral.
So check back later for more!
SpaceX Falcon 9 in final seconds of descent to successful touchdown at Landing Zone 1 on Dec 21, 2015. Credit: Chuck HigginsUp close post landing ocean view of landing legs at base of SpaceX Falcon 9 at Landing Zone 1 the day after stage touchdown at Landing Zone 1 on Dec 21, 2015 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Credit: Jeff Seibert/AmericaSpaceSpaceX Falcon 9 in final seconds of descent to successful touchdown at Landing Zone 1 on Dec 21, 2015. Credit: Dawn Taylor LeekBlastoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21, 2015. 10 minutes later the first stage successfully landed vertically back at the Cape in a historic first time feat. Credit: Julian Leek
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Blastoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21, 2015. 10 minutes later the first stage successfully landed vertically back at the Cape in a historic first time feat. Credit: Julian LeekFalcon 9 standing on LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral post landing on Dec. 21, 2015. Credit: SpaceXBlastoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21, 2015. First stage successfully landed vertically back at the Cape ten minutes later for the first time in history. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Here’s the Dec 21 launch from my video camera placed at pad 40
