Kentucky Space

Carnival of Space, Moon water edition

The latest Carnival of Space has been posted at Cumbrian Sky. As might be expected, the discovery of water on the Moon was a big topic for this week's space bloggers.

Wayne

Kentucky Space

Missions described for last Wednesday's Cubesats

In a story devoted to the primary payload, Spaceflight Now also touched on the missions for the four cubesats launched last week from India. 

Four CubeSat payloads, each about the size of the palm of a hand, were also sent into space during Wednesday's launch.

Two German CubeSats, BEESAT and UWE 2, were built by student teams to test new attitude control systems.

ITUpSAT 1 was developed by Istanbul Technical University in Turkey to examine the performance of a new stability system and take pictures of the Earth.

Another CubeSat, SwissCube, is Switzerland's first satellite and will try to detect a phenomenon known as airglow using an off-the-shelf sensor.

Wayne

Peter Diamandis: Moon water "petroleum of space flight"

Chairman and CEO of the X-PRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis, writes that finding water on the Moon could be a turning point in human history. 

Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration. Who will set up the first water mining plants? Given low-cost availability of water, hydrogen and oxygen, what type of off-Earth economies and exploration will this enable? The question is not too dissimilar to those questions asked when oil was discovered buried deep under the Earth or under the oceans. We eventually designed the technology to mine and extract this precious resource. It's what we do as humans and entrepreneurs.

Wayne

Bob Berman at the IdeaFestival

Blogging will be light the remainder of the week because I will be attending the IdeaFestival in Louisville. If you read this blog regularly, you might be interested in what astronomer, Astronomy columnist and "Biocentrism" author Bob Berman has to say on the IdeaFestival blog later this week. I'll cross-post it here as well.

In the meantime, please follow Kentucky Space on Twitter.

Wayne

Kentucky Space joins ISS Venture

Kentucky Space released this information today. Contact information can be found at the end.

Kentucky Space (KS) announced today that it is a partner with NanoRacks LLC a Houston-based aerospace company that has just signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with NASA that provides a unique opportunity for NanoRacks to design, coordinate and conduct research on the International Space Station (ISS) for itself as well as on behalf of national educational and commercial clients.

The NanoRacks Research System interfaces standard CubeSat type modules into the International Space Station (ISS) Express Racks. Our CubeLab ™ Platforms are small modules designed for use within a pressurized space station environment in orbit, with a nominal length, width, and height and a mass of 1 kg (extended CubeLabs™ are possible).

Our ever-changing solar system

While the number of planets orbiting other stars stands at 373, it's easy to forget that the estimate of the number of significant bodies in our own solar system is constantly changing. Thought to be covered in water ice, Haumea is the fourth largest dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, following Eris, Pluto and Makemake. And in the just last ten years many more trans-Neptunian objects with a diameter of at least 500 km have been added to the catalog, according to Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams. That total now numbers seventy.

Wayne

Kentucky Space, Space

Masten "rocketcam" video from Xombie

Masten Space Systems recorded yesterday's Northrop-Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge attempt from its on-board "rocketcam". Check it out.

Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log also has a nice write-up.

Wayne

Time machine commissioned

Having completed an initial first light survey on August 27 from its vantage point at L2, Planck will operate continuously for the next 15 months, making two surveys of the skies to produce maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background. In order to measure the extremely faint heat, the "time machine's" instruments have been cooled to very near absolute zero.

Wayne

Tracking SwissCube live

Southgate Amateur Radio Club is reporting that SwissCube, one of four cubesats scheduled for a Sept. 23 launch from India, has debuted a website to track the satellite after launch. Along with Google Earth and the tracker provided by the space services company Solenix, you can also watch the progress of SwissCube in 3D.

For events prior to launch, check out the blog hosted by ISIS Launch Services.

Wayne

CubeSat, Kentucky Space, Software, Space, SwissCube

"Titan through the haze"

"Titan through the haze". Besides Huygens, what's on the surface of this organic chemical factory?

Wayne

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute