Kentucky Space

Sounding rocket payload grants available

The Aeropac Rocket Club of Northern California is offering mini-grants to organizations to build and deliver sounding rocket payloads for the club's ARLISS events next June and September. Details at SEFSpaceworks.

Wayne

Hydrocarbon lakes confirmed on Titan

NASA: By measuring their rise and fall, Cassini has confirmed the presence of hydrocarbon lakes on Titan.

For several years, Cassini scientists have suspected that dark areas near the north and south poles of Saturn’s largest satellite might be liquid-filled lakes. An analysis published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters of recent pictures of Titan's south polar region reveals new lake features not seen in images of the same region taken a year earlier. The presence of extensive cloud systems covering the area in the intervening year suggests that the new lakes could be the result of a large rainstorm and that some lakes may thus owe their presence, size and distribution across Titan’s surface to the moon’s weather and changing seasons.

SpaceX donates "DragonLab" space for competitive microgravity research winner

SpaceX has partnered with it to advance microgravity research by donating space on its Dragon capsule to ferry the winning competitive proposal in a $25,000 competition called the Heinlein Prize. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and CTO has said that ‘DragonLab’ missions will start in 2010 for this purpose. According to the Heinlein Prize:

In space, there is no gravity-induced convection, sedimentation, hydrodynamic shear force, hydrostatic pressure, or mass transfer.... Experiments in microgravity can reveal novel mechanisms fundamental to cell processes, disease processes, and the adaptation of living systems to changes in physical forces, it said.

Labflight.com has more. Proposals from U.S. Universities and non-profits with industry partners are due on March 20, 2009.

The maiden flight of SpaceX's Falcon-9 vehicle, which will hoist Dragon, is set for later this year from Florida.

Wayne

Catching Prism

Carried along with the primary payload, the GOSAT satellite that will observe carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, the cubesat PRISM went to orbit on Thursday January 22 at 22:54 ET.

The Kentucky Space Earth Station at the University of Kentucky tracked PRISM on January 23rd at 13:35 EST. The Morse Code (CW) beacon was received and recorded over the UHF downlink by Kentucky Space graduate student Prasanna Padmanabhan.

PRISM was designed by the students from The University of Tokyo. This satellite will conduct an experiment on Earth image acquisition by using an expandable refracting telescope. A technological demonstration and verification of the ultra-small satellite bus made of commercial products will also be conducted. The decode follows the jump.

Big infrastructure for little Satellite: Kentucky Space's S-band Antenna System

Morehead State's Prof. Ben Malphrus in this audio clip talks about the development of an S-band communications system for KySat-1 which, as Prof. Malphrus points out, can be used for tracking, telemetry and control of other cubesats as well. The 21 meter antenna he references was also recently tested with KySat-1, and is part of an emerging infrastructure being built around the space sciences in Kentucky.

Wayne

On Mars, "Follow the methane"

Popular theoretical physicist Michio Kaku: The discovery of methane on Mars could be a gamechanger. Instead of developing exploration strategies based on "follow the water," the new strategy might be "follow the methane."

Wayne

Japanes cubesats launched; Bob Twiggs reports from ESA CubeSat workshop

Along with a satellite to observe greenhouse gases, GOSAT, several new cubesats flew on Friday. Four of the seven secondary payloads were successfully deployed.

One cubesat was a tethered satellite whose purpose was to take pictures of the "mother" satellite. More on that story is here.

Related, please check out Bob Twiggs reporting at SEFSpaceworks on the ESA CubeSat Workshop!

Wayne

Bird watching

Well perhaps, a different kind of bird. Here is a resource tracking satellites that includes one very cool way to find out what's overhead immediately. I'm looking forward to using these tools to watch KySat orbit.

Moon shadows

Contributed by NASA, science instruments aboard India's India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft are producing some of the most detailed images yet of the inside of the deepest and darkest moon craters as the they searches for possible water ice.

Wayne

New president reviews Moon rover at inaugural parade

NASA participated in the inauguration parade yesterday. Check out this video of the electric moon rover and the new president.

Wayne