Sunday, April 26, 2009

Dr Space Junk does Canberra tracking stations

What an amazing three days. I've just returned from Canberra, where I gave a presentation in the Quaternary Forum series at the Australian National University, and visited three tracking stations, Tidbinbilla, Honeysuckle Creek, and Orroral Valley, in the company of my elegant geophysical friend I. Moffat. SO much potential. I will post some photos when they are downloaded.

So I'm planning a field season now, and this means tackling the thorny question of just what I could learn by excavating abandoned tracking stations. I have many ideas, but I'm not sure how robust they are - whether they justify an excavation. The geophys, though .....




Saturday, April 18, 2009

New entries on Dr Space Junk's Space Heritage List

I am still working away at this, and will have to do some serious thinking about it soon as I rashly promised to give a research seminar in May about how I made the list!

There are currently 44 entries in Dr Space Junk's Space Heritage List. In the last month, I have added the following:


Launch sites:

Baikonur (Russia)
Jiuquan (China)
Barreiro do Inferno (Brazil) (I love this - the "Gates of Hell"!)
The San Marco platform (Italy/Kenya)

Orbital:

444 people have sent space heritage gifts on Facebook, so you can see it's not just me and my friends! Fortunately I found out recently how to track those which I have sent myself, so I can remove myself from the stats when I get to the stage of analysing them.


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The edge of space


Hold on to your hats, or in this case, your helmets: Scientists have finally pinpointed the so-called edge of space — the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

With data from a new instrument developed by scientists at the University of Calgary, scientists confirmed that space begins 118 kilometres above Earth's surface. A little further than originally assumed.

The boundary recognized by many in the space industry is also a somewhat arbitrary 100 kilometres. Scientist Theodore von Kármán long ago calculated that at this altitude the atmosphere is so thin that it's negligible, and conventional aircraft can no longer function because they can't go fast enough to get any kind of aerodynamic lift.

This 100km boundary is accepted by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), which sets aeronautical standards.

The United States, however, has never officially adopted a set boundary standard because it would complicate the issue of overflight rights of satellites and other orbiting bodies, according to NASA.

NASA's mission control uses 122 kilometres as their re-entry altitude because that's where the shuttle switches from steering with thrusters to manoeuvring with air surfaces, NASA states.

Others point out that the "Now Entering Space" sign should be posted way out at 21 million kilometres because that's the boundary where Earth's gravity is no longer dominant.


Article by Andrea Thomspon, 9 April 2009.  Copyright-Imaginova Corp. Thanks to Dave Reneke for passing this on.