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

pdxaerospaceLaunch_450x299

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.

Rare meteorite turned up in farmer’s field

That strange rock you come across might be from outer space : Farmers’ Rock Turns Out to Be Rare Meteorite | Arlington, Minn. Meteorite – Space.com

On May 30, the couple brought their find to Alexander’s lab and allowed him to chip 0.02 ounces (0.6 grams) off the edge of it for analysis under a scanning electron microscope. The rock was iron, and contained about 8 percent nickel — a telltale giveaway. Iron objects on Earth contain almost no nickel, but iron rocks from space are usually between 5 and 20 percent nickel. The microscope also revealed what’s called a Widmanstätten pattern of nickel-iron crystals that’s unique to meteorites

Video: This Week @ NASA – July.1.13

The latest This Week @ NASA:

Caption:

NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph or IRIS mission is underway. IRIS was air-launched on an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus rocket 39,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean near Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The NASA Small Explorer Mission will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun’s lower atmosphere. Also, Atlantis Unveiled, 10,00th Near Earth Object, SLS Vertical Weld Center, Human Spaceflight Update, Spacewalk Prepares ISS for New Module, Accelerating ISS Science, A HUNCH for STEM, Rocket Week 2013 and more!