There much to get excited about SpaceX's resupply mission that has just launched a few hours ago. The count down started at T-60. After lift-off, It took 10 minutes to reach the orbit before Falcon9 separates from Dragon. Dragon is expected to reach the ISS on Sunday and NASA is expected a space walk on Sunday too. Dragon is not only taking 2089kg of cargo up to ISS, but it will also be taking 1583kg of cargo back after it's due to stay for 3 weeks. It's going to get busy with 5 CubeSats being launched:
Did I say it's going to get busy? It's not just for the scientist - but you too. Zac from KickSat has been putting out a call/contest to everyone on earth to participate in listening to the sprites signals. A tweet from BIS has just came in saying "@g8fjg has received signal from #KickSat CubeSat from 22KM East of London. Short bursts recorded and another satellite in the same orbit." And for those who would rather watch, NASA is beaming video down, yes, beaming! With OPAL (Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science) on board of the cargo, NASA is expecting to laser beam video to earth. Why laser beam? "OPALS will demonstrate up to 50 megabits per second, and future deep space optical communication systems will provide over one gigabits per second from Mars." - source from NASA. NASA hopes to boost the connection speed by 50 times! And of course, this missions is developing towards a reusable launcher, Falcon9 v.1.1 could show some landing legs on return. A detail of the launch schedule and the content of the cargo is described here and here. Over the weekend of Space App Challenge 2014, some 671 space projects were born to answer 54 challenges over 95 locations - that is without counting the 75 virtual project's physical location! Wow. The 54 challenges were in 5 themes: Technology in Space, Human Space Flight, Asteroids, Earth Watch and Robotics. It sure was hard to pick a challenge to do out of the many, but when the clock strike 9 in the UK, Exoskn - an open source space suit project was born in the virtual location to answer to Kennedy Space Center's space wearable challenge, alongside 28 more projects across the world. It was one of the 75 virtual projects that got nominated for global judging but that wasn't the end. It's now making an open call for participants, looking to expand and keep moving forward with wearable electronic tinkerers, fashion designers, material scientist... name your role and skills! Here is where it got to after 36 hours (excuse the speaker, she hasn't really got any clear mind to speak by then...) : exoskn from Citizen Inventor on Vimeo. |
SubscribeCategories
All
Archives
December 2016
|