Entries Tagged 'Space' ↓
March 24th, 2008 — Boomerang, Japan, News, Space
Do boomerangs come back in space? That was a question that Japanese astronaut Takao Doi was trying to discover when he conducted the first ever boomerang throw in space.
Many people believed that gravity was necessary for the boomerang to return to the thrower. In which case, the thrown boomerang would not come back to be caught. But Takao Doi answered that question when he threw the specialy made paper boomerang and had it come back to him. So now we know. LOL
Read the whole story at Nothing to do with Arbroath: Japanese astronaut finds boomerangs come back in space
February 25th, 2008 — Hubble, Lord Of the Rings, Sauron, Science, Space
The above is a picture of Fomalhaut, a star that offers the best evidence of a star system with a complex planetary group orbiting it. The picture was taken using the Hubble telescope.
What makes it interesting, is the strong resemblance to the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so this is pretty cool.
Via New Scientist: Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings
August 27th, 2007 — Balloon, Canada, Pictures, Space
A group of guys in Alberta, Canada sent a balloon 22.27 miles up. Right to the edge of space. The balloon had a Nikon Coolpix P2 camera attached. The camera was set to take one picture a minute. Once the balloon reached the edge of the atmosphere, it burst. Coming down to a soft landing due to an attached parachute. The pictures they were able to take are amazing.
Check out their site: Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment #3
Via Gizmodo: Ordinary Guys Send Picture-Taking Balloon 22.27 Miles High
It seems like lately Canada is the place to be if you are interested in fun space projects. First we had the skydive from space, and now the balloon project.
August 14th, 2007 — Michel Fournier, Sky Dive, Space
Michel Fournier, a retired French army colonel is attempting to break all previous skydiving records. He will be trying to sky dive from 25 miles up into the sky. Which puts him right on the edge of space. His goal is to both set the record for the highest parachute drop ever, and to be the first person to break the sound barrier in free-fall. He will be attempting the jump over the Saskatchewan plains in Canada next month.
Pretty amazing. The description of his drop reminds me of the drop sequence from the Robert Heinlein book, Starship Troopers. In that book, an assault team of marines is inserted onto a planet by skydiving from near orbit. The book is pretty good, and I do recommend it. Just don’t bother watching the awful movie that was based on it.
Man plans record skydive from edge of space
April 13th, 2007 — Communications, Space
A Sri Lankan terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, has been illegally using an Intelsat satellite to broadcast propaganda messages. It seems that they discovered how to get the satellite to rebroadcast TV and radio transmissions on an unused frequency of the satellite. It’s not the first time that a terrorist group has used satellites to broadcast their message to the world, but it is the first time that it was done with out the authorization of the satellite owners.
While details on exactly how the satellite was hijacked are not available, it seems that many satellites are vulnerable to having their broadcasts hijacked.
Via Slashdot: Sri Lankan Terrorists Hack Satellite
March 29th, 2007 — Airline, Space, Wikipedia
A Russian satellite came down in the pacific ocean near New Zealand Tuesday night and narrowly missed an airliner that was flying from Santiago, Chile to Auckland, New Zealand. The Russian space agency had warned New Zealand and surrounding areas that the satellite was coming down, but it wasn’t supposed to be coming down quite as soon as it did, or in the location it came down in.
The story here
A National Geographic article on space cleanup here
