Category Archives: Events

Events, Space participation

The first Las Cruces Space Festival – April 12-14, 2018

The Las Cruces Space Festival in Las Cruces, New Mexico, near Spaceport America, will celebrate “Space for Everyone” : 

The first Las Cruces Space Festival (LCSF) will be held from April 12 – 14, 2018 to celebrate space-related activity and interest in the Las Cruces region. Locals as well as visitors are invited to join this inaugural celebration of all things space! We’re making space for everyone!

Space activity is an area of huge interest for many people, part of our culture and of our heritage. We all benefit from previous space innovations, including cell phones, GPS and weather tracking, just to name a few!

There is already much space-related activity in the area, and it’s also set to increase over the coming years, offering new prospects to our youth and drawing in experienced experts in the field to this area to help achieve our space goals.

More details about the Festival and events will continue to be updated on this site as they become available. Check back often for new events and details! We can’t wait for LCSF 2018 – it’s going to be out of this world!

More at Organizers release details of three-day Las Cruces Space Festival :

On Thursday, April 12, events will be geared toward children and families in a celebration of the anniversary of human space flight. Yuri’s Night, celebrated worldwide, marks the 1961 date when the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit around the Earth. 

Events will take place on the New Mexico State University campus and will include a mobile planetarium and a tech center featuring a space flight simulation. There will also be educational NMSU Space Talks and stargazing. Las Cruces Public Schools is also planning events earlier in the week.

On Friday, April 13, a Space Showcase at Mesilla Valley Mall will offer an opportunity for budding astronauts, curious minds and science buffs to interact with and ask questions from experts in space travel, aerospace and space exploration.

Virgin Galactic is bringing a full-scale replica of a SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocketship.

And there will be tours of the spaceport:

Festival organizers are also aiming to set up a space tour from Las Cruces to Spaceport America. KTAL 101.5 Community Radio in Las Cruces will broadcast special features and interviews throughout the week of the festival.

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Events, Rockets, Space Systems

Videos: SpaceX to attempt first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket

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SpaceX hopes to launch its  Falcon Heavy rocket today from Kennedy Space Center. The 3 hour window for the launch opens at 1:30 pm EST  (1830 GMT). There are large crowds reported gathering in the Cape Canaveral area to watch the launch.

Falcon Heavy on Pad 39A on Monday evening, Feb.5, 2018

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk gives this test a 50/50 chance of success. Problems could range from an explosion on the pad due violent interactions of the exhausts of 27 engines firing simultaneously to problems with the two side boosters separating from the core. Here is a recording of a press briefing given by ELon yesterday:

With the high risks for the first launch of a new rocket, usually a boilerplate mock-up of a spacecraft or just plain ballast is used as a payload. Elon instead chose to fly his red Tesla Roadster.

Elon’s red Tesla Roadster set on an adapter before placement in the Falcon Heavy nosecone.

If the flight is a success, the roadster will be sent into an orbit that will see the roadster cycling out to the orbit of Mars and back near earth for the next billion years or so.

Here is a SpaceX animation of the mission. Note that the two side boosters are to return to the Cape for landing on ground pads while the center core will attempt to land on a platform at sea:

About 15-20 minutes before lift off, the SpaceX webcast will go live. You can also watch it here:

As of 12:10 pm EST, the target liftoff time is 2:20 pm EST (1920 UTC) . If the rocket does not get off the ground today, there will be another opportunity on Wednesday afternoon.

Updates and background info on the launch:

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Events, Space Science, Space Systems

Videos: 40th Anniversary of the Voyager missions

To mark the 40 years of the flights of the two Voyager spacecraft through the solar system and into interstellar space, NASA held an event with several of the scientists involved in the project to discuss what it has accomplished:

This segment with William Shatner is about public messages transmitted to Voyager 1:

From the caption:

On Sept. 5, 2017—the 40th anniversary of Voyager 1’s launch—NASA revealed the winning #MessageToVoyager and beamed it into space. “Message to Voyager” is a social media campaign inspired by the messages of goodwill carried on the Golden Record aboard each Voyager spacecraft.

NASA invited the public to submit short, uplifting messages to the Voyager 1 spacecraft and all that lies beyond it. These messages were a maximum of 60 characters and were tagged #MessageToVoyager. NASA tracked more than 30,000 submissions. The Voyager team together with JPL and NASA headquarters selected their 10 favorites, which were then put to a public vote. The winning message was sent into interstellar space by a command that originated from the Deep Space Network (DSN) mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with help from the original Captain Kirk, actor William Shatner; Tracy Drain, Juno mission deputy chief engineer; Jeff Berner, DSN chief engineer; and Annabel Kennedy, DSN command engineer.

To see all 10 finalist messages and get more details about the #MessageToVoyager campaign, visit https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/message/

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Events, Solar Science

Views of the solar eclipse from space

Here is imagery of the eclipse as seen from space:

 

Update: Another GEOS-16 clip:

Update 2: A GEOS-16 clip showing the eclipse shadown moving over the whole northern hemisphere

Update 3: Yet more images of the eclipse from space starting with the view from the DSCOVR satellite, which resides about a million miles from earth:

The ISS didn’t have a great view but could be seen clearly near the far horizon:

 

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