After breaking the record for the longest stay in orbit for women, Samantha Christofertti made it safe back to earth. TMA-15M landed safely in Kazachstan yesterday at 1344 GMT. Coverage: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Futura/ESA_astronaut_Samantha_Cristoforetti_back_on_Earth| Blog of too many things
A really sad day. L-space just became much smaller.| Blog of too many things
This is something I really find pretty cool. ISEE-3 [3] is an abandoned space probe by NASA. Originally it was intended to investigate Earth’s magnetosphere, the Sun’s plasma wind cosmic rays in general. Launched in 1978 it conducted it’s mission until 1982, when the probe got a new designation: It was renamed ICE (International Cometary Explorer) […]| Blog of too many things
Now this is something I found pretty interesting; biologists found out that bees use a time-to-contact strategy when planning their landing. ESA’s Advanced Concept Team already summed up all relevant information, so I’ll give just the appropriate citations for further reading. Bonus: ACT implemented this strategy in a Parrot AR drone! References: “ACT / ESA […]| Blog of too many things
There was this interesting question if a star-formation region must be necessarily located in a galaxy; after some investigation I found out, apparently, there’s no need to! http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/1708/do-solar-systems-have-to-evolve-in-a-galaxy/2145#2145| Blog of too many things
This is big news; A friend sent me a tip to an article in the german IT new outlet Golem, which said, that Wired says that NASA will release some of it’s software “at no cost“, although I bet that quite a few softwares will be subject to export restrictions (think rocket guidance). I have […]| Blog of too many things
So why is it that +European Space Agency, ESA made #Sentinel-1 head north at launch instead of the regular east during launch? Usually you’d start east to take maximum advantage from earth’s rotation (which turns counter-clockwise if north is up) to save fuel. However, Sentinel-1 ist on a solar synchronous orbit [1], which is slightly […]| Blog of too many things
Dear space geeks, I had a little chat with the gals & guys from Rosetta’s MIDAS-Team and I’d like to sum up the relevant information as a little consolidated Twitter-timeline. our first scan since hibernation! or at least the first line of a scan :) not much to see, but everything looks good pic.twitter.com/hIpS2CyrfN — […]| Blog of too many things
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day: Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140330.html “[…] sulfur and molten silicate rock”. Not quite as crappy as HD 189733b [1], but not really comfy either. 1. “According to some recent news accounts, the atmospheric temperature is believed to be over 1000° C, with 7000 kph winds. […] And it rains molten glass. Sideways.” […]| Blog of too many things
Good Morning space geeks, I’m almost ready for my trip to the German Aerospace Center in Cologne to watch Philae’s commissioning in their Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC). But si…| Blog of too many things