Here’s an entertaining intro to Planetary Resources and their ARKYD Space Telescope Kickstarter campaign:
As of the moment, the campaign has reached 9,307 backers $844,397 pledged of $1,000,000 goal .
Monthly Archives: June 2013
The Space Show this week: June 10-16, 2013
Here is a list of the guests on The Space Show this week:
1. Monday, June 10, 2013, 2-3:30 PM PDT (5-6:30 PM EDT, 4-5:30 PM CDT): We welcome DR. MINDY HOWARD to the program to discuss space training. Dr. Howard created the Inner Space Training program to psychologically prepare commercial astronauts for their space flights.
2. Tuesday, June 11 2013, 7-8:30 PM PDT (10-11:30 PM EDT, 9-10:30 PM CDT): BOB ZIMMERMAN returns to discuss the news and events happening throughout all sectors of the space community.
3. Friday, June 14: , 2013, 9:30-11 AM PDT (11:30- 1 PM CDT, 12:30PM-2:00 PM EDT): We welcome GORDON WOODCOCK to discuss his SSP financial and economic analysis work he presented at the recent ISDC Conference.
4. Sunday, June 16, 2013, 12-1:30 PM PDT (3-4:30 PM EDT, 2-3:30 PM CDT). There will be no show today in honor of Father’s Day.
See also:
/– The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
/– The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
/– The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs
The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.
Routes to a space career
A UK university student visits Reaction Engines Limited and asks about the skills and training needed for someone interested in a career in the space industry: Space… it doesn’t have to be your final frontier! – Moving On magazine
Moving On: What is the space engineering industry like as a whole? Is it quite a big community?
Anthony Haynes: The space industry isn’t very well known, because the UK has never developed its own consistent launch system. A lot of people think because there aren’t regular rockets taking off that the UK must have a small space industry and that if you want to be an astronaut, you have to be American. But we have a healthy state of satellite technology in particular.
At Reaction Engines Ltd we have employed quite a lot of people through knowing them already, with us being part of a small team – how we work together is really crucial.
That’s why networking and space societies are so useful.
Sci-Tech: Simple, cheap infrared camera for DIY scientists
A reader points to an interesting citizen-science crowd-funding campaign: Infragram: the Infrared Photography Project by Public Lab — Kickstarter (they have far exceeded their goal and still have 26 days left) :
A simple, cheap infrared camera which can measure plant health — for geek gardeners, farmers, and open source DIY scientists.
What could farmers, gardeners, students or environmental activists do with an infrared camera that costs as little as $35?
What is Infragram?
Infragram is a simple, affordable near-infrared camera produced by the Public Laboratory community in a series of collaborative experiments over the last few years. We originally developed this technology to monitor wetlands damages in the wake of the BP oil spill, but its simplicity of use and easy-to-modify open-source hardware & software makes it a useful tool for home gardeners, hikers, makers, farmers, amateur scientists, teachers, artists, and anyone curious about the secret lives of plants.
What can you do with Infragram?
- Take pictures to examine plant health in backyard gardens, farms, parks, and nearby wetlands
- Check on the health of your crops, especially from a balloon or a kite
- Monitor your household plants
- Teach students about plant growth and photosynthesis
- Create exciting science fair projects
- Generate verifiable, open environmental data
- Check progress of environmental restoration projects
- Pretend you have super-veg-powers
WFIRST to use donated space telescope for exoplanet imaging
The WFIRST (Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope) project aims to use one of the space telescopes donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) last year primarily for the study of distant supernova and galaxies. However, it also will “be a bonanza for exoplanet studies” : Exoplanet capabilities of WFIRST-2.4 – The Space Review
In addition to microlensing to detect exoplanets, a coronagraph
will block out a large fraction of the light of target stars. With much of the glare of parent stars suppressed, the telescope will be able to directly image any planets orbiting that star. The goal is to produce as narrow an image of the space around the star as possible. This is referred to as the Inner Working Angle (IWA). The more that the IWA can be shrunk, the more inner planets can be imaged. It is possible that the enhanced WFIRST may be able to view planets as close as 1 astronomical unit (AU) to their parent star, depending on their distance from our solar system.
John Kelly applauds the use of surplus assets : Sharing technology leaps us ahead – Florida Today