Category Archives: Space participation

Activism, Contests and Games, Space participation

Uwingu contest for naming closest known exoplanet

Uwingu is sponsoring a contest to suggest a name for the nearest exoplanet found so far:  A public name for ‘Bb’: Opening the naming of the closest planet to our solar system to the people of Earth! – Uwingu

Astronomers have discovered evidence for thousands of planets orbiting distant stars. But all of these planets have only technical names, such as ’Alpha Centauri Bb,’ not memorable ones like the planets in our own solar system.

Uwingu is announcing a contest for the people of Earth to name the closest known exoplanet (planet around another star)!

Anyone can nominate a name—or as many names as you like. The name with the highest number of votes for it on April 15th will be announced as the winner! And what’s more, we’ll be giving out a series of prizes to the namers (that’s you!) of any name that gets at least 100 votes, names that get 1,000 votes, names that get 10,000 votes, and the top vote getter of all.

During the competition you’ll need to work your magic to encourage votes from your social networks, blog followers, friends, family, employers…everyone! And its for a great cause—Uwingu is creating The Uwingu Fund to accelerate space research and education, and we’re already making grants.

Get Started!

Continue..

More about the program and the plan to send some of the money raised to support NASA outreach projects:

Satellite Watching, Space participation

Operation Moonwatch – volunteers monitored early satellites

Here are interesting historical accounts of a nationwide program in the US started in the 1950s to organize amateur astronomers in the tracking of satellites:

Find more about modern tracking of spacecraft in the HobbySpace Satellite Observing section.

Astronomy, Space participation

Earth needs more volunteer asteroid searchers

A call for more amateur astronomers to help find and track asteroids that could potentially threaten earth: Amateur Astronomers Can Help Planetary Defense – Space Safety Magazine.

Astronomy, Space participation, Space Science

Looking in on some Citizen Science projects

Checking the blogs at some citizen science projects:

* Moon Zoo:

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* Planet Hunters

* Galaxy Zoo:

* Planet Four :

 

DIY space, Space participation

Training for suborbital spaceflight – needed or not?

3 Comments

Kristian von Bengtson of Copenhagen Suborbitals is skeptical of the need for specialize training for people going on suborbital space flights: Why Training for a Suborbital Spaceflight is Just another Great Story at the Local Chesterfield Club – Wired Science/Wired.com.

I’ll note that there have usually been three reasons given for suborbital spaceflight training such as that provided at NASTAR Center:

  1. To insure that those with potential health issues, e.g. advanced age and cardiovascular problems, can do the flight safely
  2. To allow suborbital spaceflight ticket holders to practice the zero-g phase with parabolic flights so they can maximize their enjoyment during the five minutes at the apogee of their flight.
  3. To include training as part of the whole experience of the spaceflight, which is very expensive at this early stage.

These all seem perfectly reasonable to me and I expect training to remain a part of suborbital adventure spaceflights even if its true that most people would survive a suborbital space flight without it.