Astronauts on the ISS talk with students in Phoenix:
Engineers Tom Marshburn of NASA and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency discussed life and research on the orbital laboratory February 26 during an in-flight educational event with 9th to 12th grade students gathered at the Metropolitan Arts Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. The event was a highlight activity as part of the ISS “Destination Station” exhibit trip touring the Grand Canyon State
The band Thirty Seconds to Mars has placed the first copy of their new song ‘Up In The Air’ on the SpaceX Dragon that is set to launch tomorrow atop a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station:
The bowling-ball-sized free-flying satellites called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites)
are being fitted with their own “goggles” — a computer and stereoscopic camera setup named the Visual Estimation and Relative Tracking for Inspection of Generic Objects, or VERTIGO — to demonstrate critical technologies for relative navigation based on a visual model.
Brent Tweddle, a member of the MIT Space Systems Laboratory SPHERES-VERTIGO experiment team, recently spoke with ISS Update commentator Pat Ryan to discuss the technology behind these tests taking place aboard the station and its applicability for future spaceflight.
Commenting on the appearance of the VERTIGO hardware, Tweddle remarked, “It’s sort of funny the way that fell out. I mean, we weren’t trying to make it look like anything, but a lot of people have commented it kind of looks like a WALL-E figure. But it really just fell out of the requirements.”
The US House of Representatives votes to rename Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base for Neil A. Armstrong and to rename the surrounding Western Aeronautical Test Range after Hugh L. Dryden.
And some members of the House are seeking to change the way NASA is managed: New Version of Space Leadership Act Would Appoint NASA Administrator for Six, Not Ten, Years – SpacePolicyOnline.
A campaign to get a US stamp recognizing the New Horizons missions to Pluto has taken a step forward: First Pluto-bound space probe gets review for US postage stamp – collectSPACE.
The campaign started with a petition drive: Pluto Stamp Watch: Stamp Petition Gains More than 10,000 Signatures – Space.com