space | Ain't Complicated

Where Is ISS?

Emily Belz wrote over at WorldMagBlog:

Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from politics and go walk around outside, look at the trees, listen to the sounds around you, gaze at the sky – perhaps catch the International Space Station flying overhead?

A new service on Twitter called Twisst alerts you when the space station will be flying over you. (To our Twitter skeptics out there, I’m trying to win you over!) It uses the location you enter on your Twitter profile, then calculates when you might see a flyover and sends you a notice on your account.

Maybe I’ll update this later with a screenshot of where ISS is relative to me.

(Oh, hey! This post adds much-needed alternative rendering of “It all depends on what the meaning of ISS is”!)

What Is Man?

Amazing Images of Shuttle and Hubble Transiting Sun

No, these aren’t sunspots finally appearing on our currently quiet sun. Check out these great images taken by NASA photographer Thierry Legault. The “spots” are actually the space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope transiting across the sun! Legault’s website says these are the only images ever taken of a transit of a shuttle and the HST in front of the Sun. Legault was in Florida at the time he took this image, about 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis.

Space Shuttle Atlantis and Hubble Space Telescope against the Sun

For further perspective, consider this. The two man-made objects are roughly 375 miles away. The God-made object — 93,000,000 miles!

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

(Psalm 8:3,4)

Oh, and here you can see Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station against the Sun.

Yesterday’s News

I saw three stories last night.

Central Oregon man stuns cheesemaking world at contest

A Brazilian-born cheese maker who traced an unlikely path from Silicon Valley to a former pumice mine near Bend just captured one of the most prestigious prizes in his profession.

Flavio DeCastilhos’ flagship goat cheese finished second in the 2009 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, considered the Academy Awards for U.S. cheese makers.

By all accounts, the accomplishment is extraordinary.

Astronomers catch a shooting star for 1st time

For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.

Last October, astronomers tracked a small non-threatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a “shooting star,” something they had not done before. It blew up in the sky and scientists thought there would be no space rocks left to examine.

But a painstaking search by dozens of students through the remote Sudan desert came up with 8.7 pounds of black jagged rocks, leftovers from the asteroid 2008 TC3. And those dark rocks were full of surprises and minuscule diamonds, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Headline correction: They found it.

How nice that they can look into the past. 😆

U.S. to blame for much of Mexican drug violence

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” Clinton told reporters during her flight to Mexico City.

Obviously she didn’t read (yet?) this or this.

Oh well.

Space Stuff

Never mind Y2K. Or even global warming.

NASA: 2012 ‘space Katrina’ may cripple U.S. for months

A recently released NASA report warns that the U.S. has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to massive infrastructure damage from solar storms.

The study, carried out for NASA by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, doesn’t predict some new solar or environmental disaster. Instead, it studies the effects of the sun’s normal, cyclical behavior upon modern technology.

Professor Daniel Baker is director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and chaired the panel that prepared the report.

“Whether it is terrestrial catastrophes or extreme space weather incidents,” writes Baker in a statement released with the report, “the results can be devastating to modern societies that depend in a myriad of ways on advanced technological systems.”

According the report, the U.S. has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it’s risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services meltdowns.

Maybe they’re picking up the approach of Solarcane Katrina:

Mystery Roar Detected From Faraway Space

Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can’t travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can’t very efficiently. But radio waves can.

[…]

There is “something new and interesting going on in the universe,” said Alan Kogut of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

[…]

“The universe really threw us a curve,” Kogut said. “Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

[…]

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

We report. You decide. Or deride. Or HangOnForAWildRide.

Updates on Previous Posts

Flushing the Mission

Toilet troubles on the International Space Station (ISS) could force Russian cosmonauts to return to Earth early, a Russian official told Interfax news agency Tuesday.

“It’s true, we have a problem with the flushing system. This is a serious matter,” warned Vladimir Solovyov, chief ground control official for the Russian section of the ISS. “In such circumstances there’s even the possibility of an emergency departure from the station.”

The main ISS toilet broke down last week, forcing the crew, two Russians and one American, to use back-up facilities.

The US shuttle Discovery delivered spare parts Monday, as well as an extra seven astronauts. Repairs are scheduled on Thursday and Friday, Solovyov said, Interfax reported.

Just so the facilities don’t back up. 🙄

And I would expect faster service from the plumbers if the parts arrived on Monday! 😯

Especially if the number of tenants went from three to ten.

But maybe the plumbers are out and about on other service calls.

I suppose, though, that the same folks who delivered the parts also brought along ~~a PortaPotty~~ their own facilities to share with the ISS crew.

Polygamist sect clarifies marriage policy

“The church is clarifying its policy on marriage,” said Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He told reporters the church would advise FLDS families “neither request nor consent” to the marriage of underage girls, though he stopped short of saying the church ever violated the law.

“In the FLDS church, all marriages are consensual. The church insists on appropriate consent,” he said.

The change in policy comes after a Texas judge issued an order Monday allowing parents of hundreds of children seized from the sect to begin picking up their kids.

[…]

The logistics of retrieving the remaining children may not be so simple, though, since some parents have children at different facilities across the state.

Under the judge’s order, the Department of Family and Protective Services will still have the right to visit and interview the children.

These unannounced visits could entail medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations, and the parents must not intervene.

Also under the order, the parents must attend and complete parenting classes. The families must remain in the state of Texas and notify the department within 48 hours of any trips more than 100 miles from their homes.