NASA's two GRAIL spacecraft recently went into orbit around the Moon, where they will measure the gravitational field and in turn map the Moon's density. As noted several time here, the spacecraft also carry cameras that will be used in the educational program MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students). A student contest resulted in the names Ebb and Flow for the two spacecraft. The MoonKAM imager on Ebb was tested by taking a series of pictures from a which a video has been created of the far side of the Moon for the first time: NASA Mission Returns First Video From Moon's Far Side - NASA -

A striking time-lapse view of the setting Moon as seen from the International Space Station:

Caption:

Produced by the Crew Earth Observations Group at NASA's Johnson Space Center from a series of still photographs taken onboard the International Space Station from 11:45:52 to 11:55:44 GMT January 9, 2012 as ship and crew were traveling 17,500 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean to just west of Europe.

I recently posted an item about the marvelous Blue Marble view of the western hemisphere of the earth created from a composite of images obtained from NASA's Suomi NPP earth observation satellite. Now NASA has released a similar image for the eastern hemisphere:
/-- PhotoBlog - NASA's 'Blue Marble' goes viral ... here's the flip side
/-- Eastern Hemisphere - Blue Marble 2012 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! - Feb.2.12

Here's a fun music video by the duo Total Ghost about their strong desire to sing on the Space Station: Total Ghost - Space Station - YouTube (via ralph.ewig blog) -


I like their New Space attitude:

If NASA says no then we’ll do it on our own,
we’ll build our own rocket and we’ll go to space alone.

An announcement from the a href="http://www.rocketcityspacepioneers.com" target="_d">Rocket City Space Pioneers:


Huntsville, Ala. (Jan. 31, 2012) – Today, on the 54th anniversary of the launching of the Explorer 1satellite, the Rocket City Space Pioneers (RCSP) invited Alabama public school fourth graders to participate in their mission to the Moon. RCSP, the Alabama Tourism Department and the Alabama Department of Education unveiled the details of a contest that will allow fourth graders to name RCSP’s Moon-bound lander. The winning class will get a free trip to Space Camp®, and the teacher will receive a $500 gift card for classroom supplies.

The announcement was made at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center®’s Davidson Center, and the event featured a rocket engine firing and a display of hardware from Rocket City Space Pioneers team members.

Tim Pickens, team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers, said: “The RCSP team is excited to involve Alabama students in our mission. Another one of our missions is educational outreach. The

Rocket City Space Pioneers want to encourage students to pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and this contest is one way we can show them cool things that can be done in these disciplines.”

The RCSP team, led by Huntsville-based Dynetics, is comprised of businesses, educational institutions and non-profit organizations. The team is competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch to the Moon a privately funded spacecraft capable of completing a series of exploration and transmission tasks.

Headquartered in Huntsville, the team’s members are all either based in Alabama or have a presence in the state. The Rocket City group is among 26 teams from all over the world that are registered in the competition.

The team is developing a low-cost lunar lander/rover system for conducting commercial and scientific missions on the Moon and potentially other planetary bodies. The lander/rover system is capable of

making a soft landing on a planetary body and deploying a rover. The Rocket City Space Pioneers are asking fourth-grade students in Alabama public schools to choose a name for their lander.

Dynetics President Tom Baumbach explained the importance of education outreach and STEM to the company leading the Rocket City Space Pioneers: “I've observed over the 44 years of my engineering career that a majority of the truly productive technical people I've worked with had a strong vision of their profession that started when they were 10 or 11 years old. That’s when we need to capture the imagination of our young students and let them feel the beginnings of passion that can serve them their entire life.

“It was reinforced when I worked at Bell Telephone Labs in the late 60s – they expected that you'd do your best work before you turned 30! That's why Dynetics is so thoroughly committed to STEM and why we're excited to have the fourth graders in Alabama name our lander – we hope it will stimulate the very age group that will be the start of our next generation of scientists and engineers."

Through the Name the Lander contest, students will learn about Moon landers through a lesson plan developed by Space Camp and fun activity sheets. Fourth-grade teachers will have an opportunity to submit their respective class’ suggested name through an online registration system. The registration period for the contest is Jan. 31- Feb. 15, 2012. The contest period is Feb. 15 - Feb. 23, 2012. The winning name will be selected in early March.

Dr. Tommy Bice, State Superintendent of Education, said, “We are very excited to be a part of this challenging competition. Alabama’s students are focusing on math and science more intensely as part of STEM education initiatives. This contest will help to encourage their knowledge of the science and engineering that is required for space exploration.”

For more information about the Rocket City Space Pioneers, go to www.rocketcityspacepioneers.com.

I recently pointed to a striking new Blue Marble high resolution view of the whole earth created from a composite of images from NASA's Suomi NPP earth observation satellite. This article shows a series of full earth views produced by various satellites since 1972, illustrating how the resolution and vividness have improved over time: 40 Years After Moon Mission Made it Famous, NASA Recreates Iconic Picture of Earth – Blue Marble 2012 - Singularity Hub - Jan.30.12.

As noted here, the SETI Institute succeeded last fall in restarting the The Allen Telescope Array after a funding shortfall had shutdown operations. However, there is a big challenge ahead in finding a steady source of money to keep it running: SETI Research Is Revived - Life Out There - NYTimes.com - Jan.30.12.

In this video from the SETI Institute's archive of seminars, Professor Sara Seager of MIT gives a fascinating talk about the search for habitable exoplanets:

Vic Stathopoulos is a space enthusiast and musician and a web acquaintance of mine. He publishes AerospaceGuide.net, a resource site with a broad array of space news and information. He publicizes his music at Reverbnation. He combines these interests in space inspired compositions that he performs with guitar, bouzouki and keyboards. His latest video, shown below, is for his song Stars and Galaxies. See the Aerospaceguide's Channel at YouTube for several more of his space music videos.

Go to AMSAT News for the latest headlines about developments in amateur and student satellites and for updates about amateur radio on the ISS.

ANS 121 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin - April 29, 2012:
* January 30 Announcement Date for NASA ELaNa CubeSat Launch Initiative
* ARISSat-1/KEDR Legacy Lives on in the DK3WN SatBlog
* Fifty Years: OSCAR-1 Celebration Continues
* Chibis-M RS-39 Deployed - Signals Heard Intermittently
* VEGA Preparations Proceeding Toward February 9 Launch
* Opportunity for Citizen Scientists: Globe At Night Project
* Last Call for SKN on OSCAR 2012 Best Fist Nominations
* SumbandilaSat SO67 Reported Beyond Repair
* Satellite Shorts From All Over

Astrophysics PhD student Rick Boozer demonstrates a low cost way that you can measure the diameter of the sun at home: Measuring the Sun’s Diameter with a Cardboard Rug Tube - Astro Maven -

They, of course, didn't actually get to space, but two Toronto teenagers did get their balloon to about 24 kilometers in altitude: Lego man sent to space by Toronto teens: Eye-catching video shows plastic astronaut's entire journey - Toronto/CBC News - Jan.25.12 -


The article led to 1337arts, which describes "Project Icarus, home of the original $150 near-space launch!" The site offers information about doing your own high altitude balloon project.

And this in turn led to Grassroots Mapping, which is an organization that uses high altitude balloons to do hi-resolution aerial mapping for public interest projects:

group of activists, educators, technologists, and community organizers now known as Public Laboratory came together to organize the Gulf Oil Mapping project. Since May 2010, we have been working with New Orleans-based Louisiana Bucket Brigade to get Gulf Coast residents out on boats and along beaches to produce high-resolution aerial imagery of the spill’s effects

Update: Alan Boyle talks about the Toronto project and other high altitude endeavours: Teens send toy above the clouds - Cosmic Log/MSNBC - Jan.27.12.

MIT's Zero Robotics competition

is a robotics programming competition where the robots are SPHERES satellites inside the International Space Station. Students program the satellites to play a challenging game. Students can create, edit, share, save, simulate and submit code: ALL from a web browser, right here on this website. All tournaments are free of charge and all you need to participate is a team, mentorship and the internet! An astronaut will conduct the championship competition in microgravity with a live broadcast from the ISS.

Thirty-eight teams were selected as 2011 finalists, Here's a report on championship event held this week simultaneously at MIT and on the ISS: Robots go head to head, 250 miles above Earth: Third annual Zero Robotics competition pits robots against each other on the International Space Station. - MIT News Office - Jan.25.12 -

Checking in on Man Conquers Space. This long running film project by David Sander aims to depict an alternate history in which, instead of the Apollo program, the US implements Wernher von Braun's vision of space development as depicted in his famous Colliers Magazine article in March 1952. The article was illustrated by the famous artist Chesley Bonestell. Despite a small budget, the film has very high quality production values as seen in the gallery of stills and videos.

According to the Website Update, the project is still moving along, albeit slowly due to the fact that Sanders can only work on it part time. There is now a Facebook site where latest info and clips are posted: Man Conquers Space - Facebook.

Here is the most recent video compilation of clips from the film:

The group Space Vacuum (from outer space) has a new album called, simply enough, New Album. It includes the song JP in tribute to JP Aerospace and John Powell: JP | Space Vacuum (from outer space) -

Robert Lamb's latest post on space music focuses on DJ Food AKA Strictly Kev and his new album The Search Engine, for which there is a 48 page book/CD & flexi disc package available: DJ Food and ‘The Search Engine’ – Space Music/HowStuffWorks -

DJ Food - 'GIANT' (Album Edit) feat. Matt Johnson by Ninja Tune

A marvelous composite image of earth has been created from imagery obtained with an instrument on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite: Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012 - Flickr/NASA Goddard- January 25, 2012 -



A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Suomi NPP is NASA's next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.

To read more about NASA's Suomi NPP go to: npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html

Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

The Science & Entertainment Exchange is

a program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects entertainment industry professionals with top scientists and engineers to create a synergy between accurate science and engaging storylines in both film and TV programming.

This article describes how the program has worked in practice: The Experts Who Put Actual Science into Hollywood Science Fiction - io9.

The Exchange's website is quite visitor friendly and includes, for example, a list of recent projects. In the Under the Microscope section, scientists describe their experiences with the film or TV show on which they worked.

DigitalGlobe's gallery of satellite photos includes some striking views of the Costa Concordia cruise ship on its side: Satellite spies cruise ship tragedy from space - Spaceflight Now - Jan.22.12.

Here is an article about the band Air's soundtrack for the restored version of Le Voyage Dans La Lune, a groundbreaking silent era movie: Air: back on moon safari: The electronic duo are back in orbit with a brand new soundtrack to the first science-fiction film ever made - The Observer - Jan.21.12.

See also this earlier posting here about the restoration: Le Voyage Dans La Lune - restored and colorized - Space For All - May.23.11.

A clip of the film with the Air music: