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HobbySpace

 

 
Welcome to HobbySpace. the site that will prove to you that everyone can participate in space exploration and development in one way or another.
November/December 2013
Blogs
Space Hobbies & Activities in the Spotlight

Planetary Resources and NASA partnering to crowdsource asteroid detection

Planetary Resources ”The Asteroid Mining Company” has announced a partnership with NASA to design and implement crowdsourcing algorithm challenges in the effort to detect, track and characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs). All data compiled and used for these challenges will be open-sourced and publicly available … Read the rest of this entry…

“Citizen Science in Astronomy” – Zooniverse conference, Taipai, Taiwan, Mar.3-7.2013

The Zooniverse  citizen science organization will hold the Citizen Science in Astronomy conference in Taipai, Taiwan in March 3-7, 2014: ... Read the rest of this entry...

More and more opportunities for student
projects to reach space

Opportunities are opening up rapidly for students from high school to grad school to see their own space science and satellite projects reach space. For example, NanoRacks offers access to the International Space Station for both science experiments on the station and to launch Cubesats from the station ... Read the rest of this entry…

High school student satellite to go to space on Minotaur I rocket

Orbital Sciences plans to launch a Minotaur I rocket on November 19th and it holds 29 satellites, including 24 cubesats. Among these is a satellite built by students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia ... Read the rest of this entry…

Planet Hunters pass 20M classifications

The Planet Hunters citizen science program hits a large numeric milestone: 20 million classifications and counting! – Planet Hunters ... Read the rest of this entry…

“Travel bug’ going to the great geocache
in the sky

Geocaching has become a popular “treasure hunt” activity around the world. Small stashes of miscellaneous items are hidden in containers in over 2.25 million spots around the globe and their locations archived at  www.Geocaching.com. Participants use their GPS units to find a cache, which might be by a waterfall in a forest or behind a telephone pole along a city street. The geocacher can take an item from the cache but they should replace it with some new item. ... Read the rest of this entry…

ISS crew member Karen Nyberg invites crafters
to join in making a grand astronomical quilt

I’ve mentioned before that astronaut Karen Nyberg, currently an ISS crew member, likes to sew as a hobby. (See posts here and here.)  She is now joining withQuilts.com and challenging other sewing enthusiasts to combine their  star themed quilt squares with the one she has made on the station ... Read the rest of this entry…

 

Space Art Spotlight

Saturn by Erick Olson
Saturn

Mars by Erick Olson
Mars

Moon by Erick Olson
Moon

Jupiter by Erick Olson
Jupiter


Erik Olson
More space art...
Space News from Virtual Amanda Bush

Here is the Nov-Dec 2013 episode of The Virtual SpaceTV 3D show with Amanda Bush. She reports on the the successful launch of a communications satellite by the new SpaceX Falcon 9 v.1.1 rocket, on swarms of Cubesats going into space, on Comet ISON, on the status of Curiosity and the launches of NASA's MAVEN mission and India's Mars Orbiter Mission to the Red Planet, and on China's Chang'e 3 lander/rover mission to the Moon.

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Other Virtual SpaceTV 3D shows are available on the HobbySpace Youtube Channel.

The Virtual SpaceTV 3D shows are created by BINARY SPACE (www.binary-space.com) with story content from HobbySpace.com. These videos are intended as demonstrations of an experimental technique for generating animated presentations. The show was generated autonomously by software according to a text script. The project is described in the Virtual Producer whitepaper (pdf). For further information contact info@binary-space.com.


Here are the previous two shows in the Virtual SpaceTV 3D series:

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Virtual SpaceTV 3D - October 2013
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Virtual SpaceTV 3D - September 2013
Space Music Video of the Month

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How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze
Simon Lacey for the project
 A Quarter Of A Million Miles
Featuring soprano Natasha Marsh and violinist Jack Liebeck

It's a Whole New Outer Space Out There

SpaceX sends SES-8 satellite to GEO, Orbital sends cargo to the ISS,
and NanoRacks sends cubesats into orbit from the ISS

A number of exciting events involving New Space entrepreneurial space development took place in the past couple of months. Here is a sample of three of them:

On December 3rd, SpaceX for the first time launched a commercial telecommunications satellite towards geostationary orbit. For the flight of the SES-8 satellite, they used the greatly upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, which had its first flight on September 29th from a new pad at Vandenberg AFB in southern California (see launch). Here is a video of this latestlaunch, which took place from Cape Canveral, Florida:

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On September 18th, Orbital Sciences launched its new Antares rocket with the Cygnus cargo module on a mission to demonstrate that the Cygnus can deliver cargo to the International Space Station. On September 29th (by coincidence the same day as the first Falcon 9 v1.1 flight), the Cygnus successfully berthed to the ISS. The Cygnus cargo was unloaded over the following few weeks and loaded with waste. The Cygnus departed from the ISS on October 23 and the next day entered the atmosphere and burned up over the ocean. Here is a video of the launch of the Antares:

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See also the video of the approach and berthing of the Cygnus with the ISS. The first operational Cygnus cargo delivery is scheduled to launch on December 17th.

Cubesats are spacecraft just 10cm x 10cm x 10cm in volume that have become very popular as student projects, as technology testbeds and for science experiments. In addition to being released from a rocket, a new low cost way to put a cubesat into orbit is to have it delivered to the station on a cargo vehicle like the Cygnus and arrange with the company NanoRacks to shoot it into orbit from the station. On November 19th, three cubesats (including two from the company NanoSatisfi) were put into orbit this way:

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Dozens of cubesats will be launched from the ISS in the coming months. This will include 28 earth observation satellites from the company Planet Labs.



Check for the latest in leading edge rocket and space travel projects on the
Space Transport News Blog
Satellite Tracking at HobbySpace
Satellite tracks
Satellite track display

3-D viewing option
Run the Satellite Tracking Tool from BINARY SPACE right here at HobbySpace in your browser. The program allows you to track a large set of satellites in both low earth and geostationary orbits. (Note: the program requires Microsoft Silverlight, Version 5 or higher, as well as the latest version of your browser. Currently the program works on the Microsoft® Windows® platform only.) The Satellite Observing section provides additional information and web resources about the hobby of satellite tracking and watching.
Real-Time Space Viewers
Sun & Space Weather Data
Sun and Space Weather
Real time images, charts and data displays

Aurora, Meteors & Fireballs Data
Aurora, Meteors & Fireballs
Real time images, charts and data displays

See the archive of previous HobbySpace homepage Spotlight items ...
October 2013 - January 2014

HobbySpace has been providing thousands of space links, news and information daily since

January 1999.

The Art of C. Sergent Lindsey

 

 
 
 
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