Take a colorful tour of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in this photo collection : The Space Age Never Looked Brighter Than It Did in the Mid-1960s – io9.
See also
A few more details dribble out regarding the problems tht China’s Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover is having on the Moon: China Exclusive: Control circuit malfunction troubles China’s Yutu – Xinhua
China’s Yutu (Jade Rabbit) moon rover suffered a control circuit malfunction in its driving unit, which troubled its dormancy in extremely low temperature, a scientist said on Saturday.
The control circuit problem prevented Yutu from entering the second dormancy as planned, Ye Peijian, chief scientist of the Chang’e-3 program, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.
“Normal dormancy needs Yutu to fold its mast and solar panels,” said Ye. “The driving unit malfunction prevented Yutu to do those actions.”
The rover is currently in another 2 week long night and will experience extremely low temperatures. The rover has radioisotope heater units (RHUs) to keep its internal systems warm. However, if the rover is not configured properly before a night period starts, e.g. closing panels to keep heat from escaping and putting solar panels in the right orientation, it may have problems powering back up when daylight returns.
[ Update: A discussion of the rover’s problems: You Too, Yutu? – Daily Planet/Air & Space Magazine.]
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Meanwhile, China’s space agency is proceeding with preparations for the Chang’e 4 lunar lander/rover mission in 2015 and the Chang’e 5 sample return mission in 2017: Preparation for Chang’e-5 launch on schedule – Xinhua.
The latest episode of NASA’s Space to Ground report on the latest ISS activities starts with brief videos of cubesats ejected from the ISS (see previous posting):
Below is a great picture posted by NASA of a recent ejection of nanosats from the International Space Station into orbit. The company NanoRacks developed the deployer and installed it on the ISS with their own funds and made a deal with the Japanese space agency to have their astronauts do the deployments from their habitat module with the use of the station’s robotic arm.
There were 33 nanosats delivered in January to the station for NanoRacks by the Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo module. The 33 nanosats included 28 earth observation satellites owned by the startup company Planet Labs. One of the other five is a NanoSatisfi Ardusat and the rest are university research satellites. The deployments started in early February and they finished sending all 33 satellites into orbit yesterday.
NanoRacks is getting so many orders, they are working to increase launch capacity from the ISS: Demand for CubeSat Deployments Nearing Space Station Limit – Via Satellite.
There are many innovative low-cost commercial space activities like these that are in operation or moving quickly towards implementation. Follow the latest developments in this NewSpace era with a subscription to NewSpace Watch, where I am the Managing Editor.
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Deploying a Set of CubeSats From the International Space Station
Two sets of CubeSats were deployed late Wednesday, Feb. 26 and early Thursday, Feb. 27, leaving just two more launches to go of the 33 CubeSats that were delivered to the station in January by Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo ship. The latest CubeSats were sent on their way at 8:50 p.m. EST Wednesday and 2:40 a.m. Thursday. CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites and have small, standardized sizes to reduce costs. Two final batches of CubeSats are set for deployment at 11:20 p.m. Thursday and 2:30 a.m. Friday, but more are scheduled to be delivered to the station on the second Orbital commercial resupply mission in May.
A selection of space policy/politics related posts:
Update:
Update 2: Rick Boozer tells me he will be a guest on tomorrow’s Spacevidcast show to discuss his recent op-ed at Space.com: Spacevidcast Live 7.06 on Livestream – Saturday Mar 1, 2014 4:00pm – 5:30pm EST
