Space on the John Batchelor Show for Jan.29-30

February 2, 2013 TopSpacer

On the latest “Hotel Mars” segment of the John Batchelor show, Batechelor and David Livingston talked with Dr. Caleb Scharf about “Vostok, water ice, Lake Whillans, Antarctica, extremophiles”: The John Batchelor Show Hotel Mars, Wednesday, 1-30-13 – Thespaceshow’s Blog.

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This week Bob Zimmerman gave his space news update only on the Tuesday, 01/29/13 show. He spoke about the following topics:

The robotic refueling demo on ISS successfully did a simulated refueling of a satellite on Friday. Iran today claimed it has successfully flown a monkey on a suborbital rocket flight. The only sources for this story come from Iranian sources, so I remain unsure whether it actually happened. Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.

See the iTunes free Podcast for links to the latest John Batchelor shows.

History, Space Arts

Colliers Magazine space series reproduction – issue number 3

February 2, 2013 TopSpacer

In case you missed it, the AIAA Houston Section released the Horizons Newsletter issue for Nov/Dec 2012 (pdf, 49MB) with the third installment of their planned full reproduction of all eight issues of Colliers magazine published between March 1952 and April 1954 with articles on space. The writers included Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley and other space notables of the time. The wonderful illustrations were created by Chesley Bonestell, Fred Freeman and Rolf Klep.

The covers of the space issues:
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In addition to the Horizons team, the project includes Scott Lowther.

The third issue is described as follows:

October 25, 1952: More About Man on the Moon
The Exploration, pp. 38-40, 44-48, Dr. Fred Whipple & Dr. Wernher von Braun
Inside the Lunar Base, pg. 46, Willy Ley

~~A sample of the art:~~

The two Horizons issues with the first two installments of the Colliers series can be found here.

Space Science, The Moon

Planetary Society Hangout, Jan.21, 2013 with lunar geologist Sarah Noble

February 2, 2013 TopSpacer

The Planetary Society Hangout on Jan 31, 2013 welcomed Sarah Noble, a lunar geologist and a member of the Research & Analysis program at NASA Headquarters. She talked about the space science program and in particular how space science proposals are reviewed and selected. She also discussed lunar science and declared that the Moon is definitely not a “been there, done that” kind of place. There is a lot of good science left to be done there. She described, for example, NASA’s LADEE mission, which will look at the dust and hyper-thin atmosphere around the Moon.

History

Tenth anniversary of the Shuttle Columbia disaster

February 1, 2013 TopSpacer

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Columbia accident. NASA held memorial events at Arlington National Cemetery and Kennedy Space Center.

There are hundreds of articles and commentaries in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other publications on line to day. (See, for example, spacetoday.net and news.google.com) Here is a sampling of items about the tragedy and its affect on the US space program: