building nothing out of something
It’s impossible not to be impressed by what these people can do. Now they’ve, as expected, flown a small helicopter on Mars.
So. fucking. cool!
Here’s a really nice recap of the flying itself by Space.com:
I saw the live stream, and it was an amazing experience. The team’s reactions was pure happiness. 😊
Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and it’s (just) 60 years ago. It was an amazing feat, and will forever be written down in history books. A space race superhero!
BBC has a nice litt segment about this, with some really cool details. The monument to honor Gagarin looks amazing.
As promised, there would be much more information on Monday, and here are some really cool stuff.
Descent and touchdown:
First 360° Panoramic view of mars from the rover where you can use to mouse to look around:
Here’s a more static video of the same thing:
Even more 360° goodness with more information:
First sounds (wind) from Mars:
Mission experts monday update (note: it’s almost 2 hours long):
A big day, Perseverance Rover is landing on Mars. Just a few minutes now and it’ll enter the Mars atmosphere.
The featured image for this post is Perseverance’s first low-res image taken just seconds after landing.
This fall we celebrate 20 years of the International Space Station. NASA has put together a really nice video about this event.
There’s so much going on when it comes to space nowadays. Mars news in particular are interesting now, since Mars is at its closest to earth.
The next generation of robot explorers to Mars had a lift-off today on a Atlas V rocket, and it went really well. It’s a really long trip, and they expect the robot rover, Perseverance, to land on Mars Feb. 18 2021. Here’s an overview video from NASA JPL of the launch:
Everything you need to know about NASA Mars 2020 can be found here. The full video of today’s launch can be seen here.
As I’m typing this, Russian Roscosmos just launched a Proton-M rocket carrying two satellites, Ekspress-80 and Ekspress-103. Here’s the full video (in Russian, but the on-screen text after launch is also in english), for that mission:
Tomorrow night (August 1. 23:15 CET), the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle will return to earth with the astronauts Bob & Doug. I will follow that too, and this is the link to the official NASA stream:
Arianespace will also send up a couple of satellites in orbit on July 31, and they will start their transmission (in English/French) around 23:00. This link is for the English version:
While we wait for the Webb space telescope, we still have Hubble, and the vast achievements it has made in its 30 years of discoveries.
On April 24th 2020 it celebrated 30 years in space, and here are some appreciation videos from NASA, ESA, and the YouTube-channel It’s Okay To Be Smart.
NASA
Discoveries by Hubble
ESA
Some history of Hubble incl. the launch
It’s Okay To Be Smart (PBS)
Some extended information about the history, discoveries, and technology
Space – the proof that the human race will never learn everything, but we’re doing a pretty damn good job so far.
This is such a huge feat for SpaceX… and mankind. Amazing to see this happen, and it just adds to the whole “one small step […]” thing uttered some time ago by a certain someone.