Orbital debris is any human-made object in orbit about the Earth that no longer serves a useful function. Such debris includes nonfunctional spacecraft, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris, and fragmentation debris.
Vanguard 1[1], designed to test the launch capabilities of a three-stage launch vehicle as a part of Project Vanguard, and the effects of the space environment on a satellite and its systems in Earth orbit was launched by the USA on March 17, 1958, is the oldest piece of space junk. It stopped operating in 1964 but will continue orbiting Earth for 240 years.
“Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.”
-Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 26, 1922, and grew up in Saint Paul. He was a cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Peanuts. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history. He has been cited by many cartoonists as a major influence, including Jim Davis, Murray Ball, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening, and Dav Pilkey.
Crazy names for concert tours
A lot of band tours over the years have the album they’re promoting name, like Queen’s 1975/1976 “A Night at the Opera Tour”, or where they were going, like Led Zeppelin‘s 1968/1969 “North American Tour”. Some bands chosen tour names are a bit more fun, here are a few.
Not much bigger than a Rubik’s Cube
CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. CubeSats are built to standard dimensions of 4 in x 4 in x 4 in. They typically weigh less than (3 lbs). NASA’s CubeSats are deployed from a Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployer, or P-POD.
Capturing all that glitters In galaxies with NASA’s Webb
The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built. It will allow scientists to look at what our universe was like about 200 million years after the Big Bang. The telescope will be able to capture images of some of the first galaxies ever formed.
The physical limitations of railroad tunnels, narrow roads, low bridges, and power lines make overland shipment of oversized cargo extremely problematic, if not impossible. NASA’s Super Guppy offers a practical and economical solution to these problems.
The Aero Spacelines Super Guppy (SG) is a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft that is used for hauling outsized cargo components. It is the replacement for the Pregnant Guppy.
The observatory is used for radio astronomy (listening for radio signals), radar astronomy (imaging inner Solar System asteroids etc.) and atmospheric science.
The Arecibo Observatory was built in 1963 by the U.S. Air Force under the initiative of Professor William Gordon in the Department of Electrical Engineering and his colleagues at Cornell. The initial funding was for the ARPA (United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) missile defense program.
Travis Shane Taylor was born in Decatur, Alabama on July 24, 1968. His father, Charles Taylor, worked for Wyle Laboratories, as a machinist, who subcontracted with NASA in the 1960s building America’s first satellites with Wernher von Braun. At 17, Travis built a radio telescope that won the state science fair, placing 6th in the nation.
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid study spacecraft. It’s mission is to collect at least 60 grams of material from the near-earth asteroid 101955 Bennu and return it to Earth.
Amy Shira Teitel (born in Toronto, lives in Pasadena with her cat Pete Conrad) has had a lifelong passion for spaceflight, her second grade project was on Venus and since then hasn’t stopped accumulating knowledge on the Apollo program and all of Space history.
