Trent Waddington spotlights this introductory video about scramjets and the University of Queensland’s scramjet program:
Charles Simonyi at the Kansas Cosmosphere
Billionaire Charles Simonyi, who flew twice to the ISS at his own expense (see Charles in Space), visits the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas and there is a lot of mutual admiration : Kansas Cosmosphere impresses visiting billionaire space tourist – Wichita Eagle.
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Rocket launch by the Portland State Aerospace Society
Via Ben Brockert comes news of the launch on Sunday of the Portland State Aerospace Society of the student built LV2.3 rocket with active roll control: PSAS Launch-10 — June 30, 2013.
There were lots of Twitter posts during the event: PSAS (pdxaerospace) on Twitter
They posted this today – PSAS (pdxaerospace) on Twitter
A picture of yesterday’s launch: pic.twitter.com/RLAoTinuPB
It looks great at liftoff but they posted this today – Twitter / pdxaerospace:
@wikkit Thanks! The bad news is roll control failed for an unknown reason about 5 seconds into the flight.
It nevertheless released its parachute properly and was recovered intact.
Video: Curiosity sees Phobos passing overhead
This is really cool. The Curiosity Rover pointed its Navigation Camera upwards and caught the Mars moon Phobos crossing the dark sky:
Caption:
This movie clip shows Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, passing overhead, as observed by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity in a series of images centered straight overhead starting shortly after sunset. Phobos first appears near the lower center of the view and moves toward the top of the view. The clip runs at accelerated speed; the amount of time covered in it is about 27 minutes.
The 86 frames combined into this clip were taken by the rover’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) on the 317th Martian day of Curiosity’s work on Mars (June 28, 2013, PDT). The apparent ring about halfway between the center of the frames and the edges is an artifact of the imaging due to scattering of light inside the camera.
The NASA 21st Class of Astronauts
Here is a website dedicated to the most recent NASA class of 8 astronauts: Astronaut Candidates.