Fireballs Across the Sky

My great-grandparents were married in 1870. They farmed in west-central Illinois a mile from his brother. The brothers moved to Illinois from Ohio. Earlier, they moved to Ohio from Virginia during the Civil War. The rectangle in this 1941 aerial photo shows the location of the farmstead where my great-grandparents lived after they were married.

1941

Here are my great-grandparents and their five children in about 1890. My grandfather is the one in the center back row.

Here is my great-grandfather’s brother and his wife. They eventually had seven children. Notice a date of Oct 74 at the bottom. That is when a relative photographed the original photo from nearly 100 years before.

 

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Ceres | My First Views

Update: Second date of views (4 Jan 2019) is at the bottom of this post.

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The largest asteroid Ceres has been orbited by the ion-engine powered DAWN spacecraft since early 2015. DAWN ran out of fuel to maneuver in October 2018 and will remain silent in orbit at Ceres for decades. Previous to Ceres, it visited the second largest asteroid Vesta. This fly-over video gives a close view of Ceres.

The asteroid is far away and quite small and dim. It is not something most people have ever seen with the naked eye or in a telescope. I’ve been tracking Ceres with desktop planetarium software with hopes to see it. I am happy to report success.

I Made It to Mars

UPDATE: InSight landed successfully on Mars on 26 Nov 2018. The microchip with my name and 2.4 million others is now resting on Mars attached to the spacecraft.

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6 Nov 2017: My bags are packed. I am ready to join 2.4 million other passengers as we begin our journey to Mars in May 2018 aboard the INSIGHT spacecraft. The trip will take about 7 months. It is a one-way journey.

Click to read the fine print. My flight miles award will be enormous.

INSIGHT is the acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. NASA loves acronyms. Previous Mars missions have studied intensively the surface and atmosphere of the planet. This spacecraft is the first designed to study the interior in hopes of finding clues to the formation of the rocky inner planets. The spacecraft will use seismology, heat flow equipment, and very precise tracking to probe the planet below ground.

InSight Lands Safely on Mars

I love to see scientists celebrate success of their work. Today the InSight spacecraft made a safe landing on the surface of Mars. It was a tense 7 minutes. The video has been set to begin moments before touchdown. Watch and enjoy.

ISS Passed by Saturn and Mars

The International Space Station approached from the northwest at 9 pm on 8 Aug 2018. It went high overhead in a southeasterly direction. It tracked above Saturn and the Teapot in Sagittarius before disappearing near Mars. There it entered the darkness of Earth’s shadow.

Taken on iPad with NightCap | ISS mode | 189 sec exp

Here is the same image annotated. Can you also see the light trails left by two passing jets? Tap images for more detailed views.

Looking SE at 9 pm

Return From Space

Discussion in a previous post centered on getting to space and into an orbit near Earth. This post is about how spacecraft return from orbit. Some returns are under control and some are not.

Energy Exchange

Launch to orbit requires giving a spacecraft a large amount of kinetic energy of motion (KE) and a large amount of gravitational energy (PE) due to its altitude. The large amount of work done to gain those energies comes from the potential energy released by an engine(s) as fuel burns. Once in orbit with engine(s) off, the total of those two energies (KE+PE) stays constant except for the small decrease due to the small atmospheric drag at high altitudes. If the orbit is a circle the two energy quantities are unchanging.

If the orbit is an eccentric ellipse, the quantities do change but not their total. The next graphic shows an eccentric orbit of an Earth satellite. When it passes closest to Earth (perigee), the KE is at its maximum value and the PE is at its minimum. Font size was changed to illustrate their inequality. When at its farthest point in orbit (apogee), it is going slowest with minimum KE and is at its highest altitude with maximum PE.

Endurance | A Year On ISS

I’ve been enjoying the book Endurance by Astronaut Scott Kelly. He tells of his life before becoming an astronaut and of his year in space aboard the International Space Station from March 2015 to March 2016. He and his identical twin brother Astronaut Mike Kelly were studied extensively to see the effects of long duration space flight on the human body. This study is an important one for the planned trip to Mars. The Twin Study is ongoing. Here are some of the latest articles about it.

The book provides countless behind the scenes looks at the lives of space explorers. I highly recommend the book to the space enthusiast. Part of Kelly’s duties now include travel to stores and special events to promote the book. My son attended a book-signing event near him and bought a copy for me. Kelly was invited to Talks at Google on 24 Nov 2017 where he spoke for about an hour about his experiences. You can watch his talk at this link.

I am a strong believer that we humans are capable of amazing and wonderful things. When we set our minds to a goal and work together, we can accomplish the most difficult of tasks. As Scott Kelly ended his talk, he spoke of how he feels about the potential of mankind. This is exactly how I see it.