Speaking of space models, Alan Boyle of MSNBC posted this today – Twitter / b0yle:
WANT! RT @gdora10: Revell 1/144 Space Ship Twd & Whiteknighttwd 入荷発売中！ pic.twitter.com/ajb54rYpUt
I’ve mentioned previously that the Mars Curiosity rover LEGO model designed by Stephen Pakbaz , who had worked as an engineer on the real Curiosity rover at JPL, would become a commercial product from LEGO. The project was part of the LEGO® CUUSOO hobbyists program, which has seen some of their other models become production products for LEGO as well.
This past week LEGO announced that the model will hit the store shelves on January 1st:
Here’s a video interview with Stephen:
The University of Southern California Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (USCRPL) team in September launched their 4-meter, 136 kilogram Traveler 1 rocket from the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada : Young Rocketeers Reach for Space – IEEE Spectrum.
The rocket exploded a few seconds after liftoff but the launch was a step in the right direction for the program.
USC Rocket Lab Launches Traveler 1 from USC Viterbi on Vimeo.
Astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins have just concluded what appears to have been a very successful EVA this morning. It is the first of two or perhaps three spacewalks needed to fix the balky pump in the cooling system for the station. Today they removed the failed pump and prepared for inserting a spare pump on Monday.
Lots of pictures from the EVA were posted at ISS Updates (ISS101) on Twitter.
A reader points me to a very successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $96,799, far beyond the goal of $50,000, to fund development of a low cost propulsion system capable of sending nanosats on deep space missions: CAT: Launch a Water-Propelled Satellite into Deep Space by Benjamin Longmier, Ph.D. — Kickstarter
Our vision is to enable extremely low-cost access to deep space. We are developing the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster (CAT), a new rocket propulsion system powered by the Sun and propelled by water, which will push small spacecraft like CubeSats around and far beyond the Earth. New propulsion technologies can cost billions of dollars and take a decade to build and launch. CAT will be one of least expensive and most rapidly developed deep-space-capable systems ever built.