Alan Boyle reports on ISS crew-member Don Pettit's latest creative output on the station: Astronaut shares groovy space trip - Cosmic Log.

For example, here is another of Pettit's cool physics demo videos:

Artist Tom Sachs opens a space themed live show/exhibition combo in New York:

Artist Tom Sachs takes his SPACE PROGRAM to the next level with a four week mission to Mars that recasts the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall as an immersive space odyssey with an installation of dynamic and meticulously crafted sculptures. Using his signature bricolage technique and simple materials that comprise the daily surrounds of his New York studio, Sachs engineers the component parts of the mission—exploratory vehicles, mission control, launch platforms, suiting stations, special effects, recreational amenities, and Mars landscape—exposing as much the process of their making as the complexities of the culture they reference.

SPACE PROGRAM: MARS is a demonstration of all that is necessary for survival, scientific exploration, and colonization in extraterrestrial environs: from food delivery systems and entertainment to agriculture and human waste disposal. Sachs and his studio team of thirteen will man the installation, regularly demonstrating the myriad procedures, rituals, and tasks of their mission. The team will also “lift off” to Mars several times throughout their residency at the Armory, with real-time demonstrations playing out various narratives from take-off to landing, including planetary excursions, their first walk on the surface of Mars, collecting scientific samples, and photographing the surrounding landscape.

Beneath the compulsive tinkerer’s mentality and ribald wit that permeate SPACE PROGRAM: MARS, and Sachs’ work at-large, is a conceptual underpinning that addresses serious and profound issues—namely the commodification of abstract concepts such as originality, shock, newness, and mystery—expressing them in the personal and physical terms of production and process. With the recent shuttering of NASA’s shuttle program and the shifting focus towards privatized space travel, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS takes on timely significance within Sachs’s work, which provokes reflection on the haves and have-nots, utopian follies and dystopian realities, while asking barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation.

OPEN HOURS
Wednesday, May 16 – Sunday, June 17, 2012
Tuesdays – Sundays: 12:00pm – 7:00pm
Fridays: 12:00pm – 9:00pm
Monday, May 28 (Memorial Day):
12:00pm – 7:00pm
Closed all other Mondays

ESA and the Faulkes Telescope Project are collaborating to develop a crowd-sourcing program in which amateur astronomers and students will hunt for near earth asteroids:


A partnership with the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project promises to boost the Agency’s space hazards research while helping students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks.

ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects in Earth orbit and asteroids that pass close enough to cause concern.

The asteroids – known as ‘near-Earth objects’, or NEOs, since they cross Earth’s orbit – are a particular problem.

Any attempt to survey and catalogue hazardous asteroids faces a number of difficulties. They’re often jet black or at least very dark, they can approach rather too close before anyone sees them, and they’re often spotted only once and then disappear before the discovery can be confirmed.

Crowdsourcing the astronomy community

So ESA is turning to amateur astronomers to ‘crowdsource’ observations as part of Europe’s contribution to the global asteroid hunt. These efforts will add to the follow-up observations already done at ESA’s own telescope on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

This month, the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project will become the latest team to formally support the SSA programme. Spain’s La Sagra Sky Survey, operated by the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca, began helping SSA earlier this year.

Sharing expertise and observing time

“The wider astronomy community offers a wealth of expertise and enthusiasm, and they have the time and patience to verify new sightings; this helps tremendously,” says Detlef Koschny, Head of NEO activity at ESA’s SSA programme office.

“In return, we share observing time at ESA’s own Optical Ground Station in Tenerife and provide advice, support and professional validation. We’ll assist them in any way we can.”

The Faulkes Telescope Project runs both educational and research programmes, based at the University of Glamorgan in the UK.

Public education and outreach

The project has a strong record in public education and science outreach, and is a partner of the US-based Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network, which owns and operates two telescopes. Faulkes supports hundreds of schools across Europe.

“Our new cooperation with ESA is a great opportunity. Use of the 2 m-diameter telescopes in Hawaii and Siding Spring, Australia, will greatly enhance asteroid-spotting for the SSA programme, enabling fainter object detection and tracking from a global telescope network,” says Nick Howes, Pro-Am Programme Manager at the Faulkes Telescope.

“For European students, collaborating on exciting ESA activities and possibly detecting new NEOs is very appealing, as it’s engagement with one of the world’s great space agencies doing critical scientific work.”

ESA’s SSA programme is developing services and infrastructure to enable Europe to observe NEOs, predict their orbits, produce impact warnings and be involved in possible mitigation measures and civil response.

It will also provide services to monitor man-made debris objects in orbit that can pose hazards to satellites and to monitor the effects of space weather phenomena on space and ground assets.

Singer-songwriter Will-i-am.com of the group Black Eyed Peas has been asked to write a song that will debut on Mars: Will.i.am track could be played on NASA Mars mission - The Sun.
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Elton John performed his famous space song "in Las Vegas, on 17 April 2012, 40 years to the day after his single Rocket Man was released around the world": ‘The Rocket Man’ greets the ‘Rocket Men’ - Focus On/ESA -


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During his current his current stay on the ISS, which he calls the PromISSe mission,

ESA astronaut André Kuipers is listening - of course - to a lot of his favourite music. He has taken a selection of music with him on the ISS and soon a song a day will be featured on his blog (blogs.esa.int/andre-kuipers). Here some of the artists included on André's playlist send their best wishes, including Marillion, Pink Floyd and one of Andre's all-time favourites, Dutch guitarist, Harry Sacksioni.

A review of the app F-Sim Space Shuttle by Ledinsky Software GmbH: F-Sim Space Shuttle for iOS: A Superb Flight Simulator | In-Depth Review - The Mac Observer - May.11.12.

Singer-songwriter Ed Robertson of the group Barenaked Ladies and astronaut Chris Hadfield are writing a song together that Hadfield will premier on the International Space Station:
/-- CBC Music, Coalition for Music Education and Canadian Space Agency Take Music to New Heights: Astronaut and musician Chris Hadfield and Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson to co-write official song for Music Monday 2013 to celebrate music education - Canadian Space Agency - May.7.12 (via spacetoday.net)
/-- Ed Robertson and Chris Hadfield prepare to collaborate between earth and space CBC Music - Free Streaming Radio, Videos, Songs, Concerts & Playlists

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 134 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin - May 12, 2012:
* 14 May Reservation Deadline for AMSAT/TAPR Banquet at Dayton
* AMSAT Theme at Dayton 2012: Running with Fox
* TAPR Forum at Dayton Hamvention
* Vietnam F-1 Cubesat Team Completed Successful Communication Test
* 15 May Deadline to Apply for ARRL TI-2 Space in the Classroom Institute
* NASA TV to Broadcast Three Hams Launch From Baikonur
* Satellite Shorts From All Over
* ARISS Status - 7 May 2012
1. ARISS - Virginia Contact Successful
2. Ham Nation Features Flabob Contact
3. Astronaut Training Status

Here is the latest Virtual SpaceTV 3D show, which was created by BINARY SPACE with story content from HobbySpace.

Virtual presenter Amanda Bush starts with an update on the planned launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station and then she reports on the final flights of Shuttles Discovery and Enterprise. Amanda spotlights the firm Planetary Resources, which recently laid out its plan for mining asteroids. Amanda reports on NASA's call for amateurs to help in finding near earth asteroids and on a project in which citizen scientists map craters on the Moon. The program ends with spaceweatherman James C. Birk discussing the unexpectedly mild peak in the current phase of the solar cycle.


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

These videos are intended as demonstrations of an experimental technique for generating animated presentations. The show was generated autonomously by software and without human interaction. The project is described in the Virtual Producer whitepaper (pdf). For further information contact info@binary-space.com. (Note that the virtual voices have taken another step forward towards a more natural sound.)

I received the following information today about the short film Microbe being made by Doug Eboch:

MICROBE is a 3D short film about a mission to Mars that has discovered microbial life in soil samples. After an accident releases some of the microbes into the ship’s atmosphere, the astronauts start exhibiting frightening behavior.

The goal will be to create an extremely realistic vision of what a manned mission to Mars would actually look like. In other words, there will be no “artificial gravity.” We will use green screen and digital effects to simulate zero gravity. The use of 3D will enhance this effect.

The film will star Scott Peat (of the upcoming movie Dead Season) and Joan Farrell. Erika Woo, an engineer on the Mars rover missions, will serve as a technical consultant

More info at Microbe on Facebook.

The winners of the Space Foundation's Student Art Contest had their art bounced off the moon:


Colorado Springs, Colo. (May 8, 2012) - The Space Foundation's annual Student Art Contest winners are developing a reputation for actual space travel. Digital versions of last year's winners are all permanently in residence on the International Space Station. Two of this year's winners have traveled an additional 277,000 miles to the Moon and back.

Two of the winning pieces of artwork -- both in the 6th - 8th grade painting category -- were selected by media artist Daniela de Paulis to be part of her worldwide OPTICKS project, which projected a total of ten digital images of artwork onto the surface of the Moon on April 28 and intercepted the altered reflections, thus creating new images.

The "bounced" Space Foundation art was created by:

- Syed Nofal Shah Bokhari of the Army Public Schools and College, Kohat, Pakistan, who won both first prize and grand prize in 6th - 8th grade painting
- Raquel Arens of Eagleview Middle School, Colorado Springs, Colo., who won both second prize in 6th - 8th grade painting and the Space Foundation Achievement Award

Part of Global Astronomy Month for the second year in a row, de Paulis' OPTICKS project was coordinated in collaboration with CAMRAS radio amateurs association based at Dwingeloo radio telescope in The Netherlands. OPTICKS is a live performance during which digital images are sent to the Moon in the form of radio signals from a dish situated in Brazil, Poland, the UK or Switzerland and received back by Dwingeloo radio telescope. The name, OPTICKS, was inspired by Sir Isaac Newton's discoveries of the light spectrum, reflection and refraction. At the end of the OPTICKS event, de Paulis and the CAMRAS team sent the images of the seven colors of the spectrum to Earth's closest star (other than the Sun), Epsilon Eridani, situated at a distance of 10.5 light years and known to host a planet.

Following are the original and the moonbounced images:

Syed Nofal Shah Bokhari


Raquel Arens

Moonbounced images are the property of Daniela de Paulis and the OPTICKS project, www.opticks.info.

About de Paulis
Living and working between Italy and The Netherlands, Daniela de Paulis has a degree in fine arts from the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome, Italy, and a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Qualified as an art educator, she teaches art for both adults and young learners. Since 2009, de Paulis has been artist in residence at Dwingeloo radio telescope, where she developed, together with Jan van Muijlwijk and the CAMRAS team, a new way of communicating via the Moon, now called Visual Moonbounce. Her latest work is the short film, le Voyage dans la Lune, inspired by the 1902 film by George Méliès, and featuring 'moonbounced' images. De Paulis is currently a Ph.D. student at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

About the Space Foundation and the Space Foundation Student Art Contest
The foremost advocate for the space industry and an expert in all aspects of space, the Space Foundation is a global, nonprofit leader in space awareness, educational programs that bring space into the classroom and major industry events, including the National Space Symposium, all in support of its mission "to advance space-related endeavors to inspire, enable and propel humanity." The Space Foundation publishes The Space Report: The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity and provides three indexes that track daily performance of the space industry. Through its Space Certification and Space Technology Hall of Fame® programs, the Space Foundation recognizes space-based technologies and innovations that have been adapted to improve life on Earth. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Colorado Springs, the Space Foundation conducts research and analysis and government affairs activities from its Washington, D.C., office and has a field office in Houston, Texas. For more information, visit www.SpaceFoundation.org. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and read about the latest space news and Space Foundation activities in Space Watch.

Each year, the Space Foundation invites students from around the world in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade to submit original artwork in three categories -- painting, drawing and multimedia - depicting a specific space theme. The art is judged by a panel of art experts and the winners receive prizes and recognition by the Space Foundation. The 2012 theme was "Space is Infinite -- Explore!" The 2012 contest was co-sponsored by ARES Corporation and Fisher Space Pen. See all of the winning artwork, the award video and details about the contest at: www.spacefoundation.org/education/student-art-contest

Robert Lamb posts his latest collection of space inspired music: Space Music: Music on Titan, Sistema, Drokk and Alan Howarth – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks.

These include:

This effort to build, or at least to design, a slower-than-light version of the Starship Enterprise looks like a fun project: BuildTheEnterprise (via Transterrestrial Musings).

There would be a number of modifications from the TV/Movie vehicle. For example, artificial gravity would be produced the old-fashioned way - by centrifugal force:

Check out the National Geographic's collection of beautiful pictures of the perigee full moon, or supermoon, that occurred last weekend: Supermoon Pictures: Best Shots of Year's Biggest Full Moon - National Geographic.

For example []:



This NASA video explains the perigee full moon:

A look at some of the futuristic technologies highlighted in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and compared to what is available today: David H. Bailey: 2001: A Space Odyssey: Art vs. 2012 Reality - Huffington Post.

Space Mission is

a game for iPhone and iPad allowing players to interactively fly into large-scale computer models of our cosmos.
[...]
The player of SpaceMission undertakes a virtual journey in a computer model of our cosmos spanning several millions of earth years to discover galaxies.

At any point during this journey the player can click a snapshot using a virtual camera. Once all galaxies are found, cinematic movies can be generated from the snapshots taken, using high performance computers. The technology to support SpaceMission is based on VisIVO, a high-performance environment for astrophysical visualisation.

A competition with the app is sponsored by supported by the INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Catania (Italy), and the University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). The competition is open to students aged 12 and older

When a movie for the SpaceMission@INTECH competition is generated, the system automatically saves it and the player is notified by email.

An international committee of experts will consider all submitted movies for awarding prizes. Prizes will consist of technological equipment only, e.g. mobile devices such as iPods, iPods touch, iPads and iPhones.

Find more about the app and the competition at World’s First ‘Search and Find’ Space Mission! - British Interplanetary Society.

International Space Station Expedition 30 crew member Don Pettit has created a marvelous video that shows a wild diversity of motion for water droplets oscillating on top of a speaker in microgravity as he plays various tones and even a ZZ Top song (via Space Safety Magazine) -



Find more physics demonstrations in microgravity at www.physicscentral.com/explore/sots/

In an innovative technology demonstration and education project, ESA astronauts on the International Space Station later this year will control a small robot on earth that will traverse a cityscape created by students: Terraforming a landscape for a robotic rover - ESA Space Engineering.

The goal of the Meteron (Multi-purpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network) project is to learn more about telerobotic control of rover vehicles on the surface of the Moon, Mars, and other bodies by astronauts in orbiting spacecraft.

Via a display on their computer, the ISS crew-members will direct the robot, which was built from the LEGO Mindstorm kits, to move about a landscape that was created by students in schools near the t ESA’s European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.

Here is a set of photos of the project: Meteron: Multi-purpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network - Flickr.

Bob Zimmerman reports on recent developments on the sun: The Sun fizzles in April - Behind The Black.

Photographer Chris Haber is raising money at Kickstarter to support publication of his book After The Shuttle: An Artist's Inside View of Post-Shuttle NASA. The book

features stunning artwork of rarely seen behind-the-scenes areas NASA in full page color images with helpful facts about each picture, a politically neutral chronology of when & how the shuttle was retired, a run-down on the shuttle's replacement Orion/SLS & NASA's new Commercial Crew Program and unmanned science experiments still ongoing. Its also going to cover some global space history many of us don't know & teach us all the lingo and acronyms all while showing an amazing photographic artist's behind-the-scenes perspective with images, subjects, and unusual angles & stories many have never seen. Sample images can be viewed at ChrisHaber.com in the top of the SPACE gallery. The majority of images have not be released so they may be seen for the first time when the book releases

The book is nearing publication and I'm trying to raise the money for the publishing. I've posted a project on Kickstarter that anyone can donate to. You can checkout Kickstarter, they are a very reputable company, many people you know may have already used it. All money is processed by Amazon.com . The minimum donation is only $1. There are lots of great rewards at all contributor levels. If you can't help in that way, it would mean a great deal to me if you passed this on to everyone you know whether posting on your FB page, twitter, email, blog, forums, friends, family, work, anywhere else, etc. Even more so if you felt you could contribute. NO ONE will be charged until Monday Jun 4, and then ONLY if the minimum goal is reached.

Details of the project can be found here: After The Shuttle (Photographic Art / History / Science Book by Chris Haber — Kickstarter.

This video outlines the project:

The five finalists in the Space Needle | Space Race 2012 contest will compete this week in Seattle for a ride to space: Competition is on for chance to fly to space: 5 finalists left in once-in-a-lifetime chance marking Space Needle's 50th anniversary - msnbc.com.