Space Stuff and the Such.

[Big Kev]

[Big Kev]

I photographed Mercury crossing the Sun last week. Didn't come out too badly!

Around the 8 o'clock position on the very edge in case you can't see it!!

[durbster]

Amazing Kev.

She's a big old girl that sun isn't she.

[Speed]

Yep, great shot.

[durbster]

But Mercury needs to raise its eclipse game. Rubbish effort.

[Big Kev]

[Big Kev]

There's a second series of the excellent BBC 13 minutes to the moon podcast series starting next week. It's about Apollo 13 this time.

[norbs]

There's a second series of the excellent BBC 13 minutes to the moon podcast series starting next week. It's about Apollo 13 this time.

The presenter Kevin Wong has been recruited to the NHS pandemic team. So the last ep is delayed. But, it has been excellent!

[Big Kev]

This is cool. Someone made an animation of famous rockets with transparent tanks so you can see how much fuel they use

The four rockets are, from left to right, a Saturn V moon rocket, a Space Shuttle stack, a Space X Falcon Heavy rocket, and the upcoming NASA Space Launch System (SLS) launcher.

The fluids are color coded: red is Kerosene (RP-1), orange is liquid hydrogen (LH2), blue is liquid oxygen (LOX), and the solid rocket boosters on the sides of the shuttle and SLS are shown with a column of plasma-like stuff indicating the solid fuel level.

[Big Kev]

There's a second series of the excellent BBC 13 minutes to the moon podcast series starting next week. It's about Apollo 13 this time.

The presenter Kevin Wong has been recruited to the NHS pandemic team. So the last ep is delayed. But, it has been excellent!

The final 1hr episode is out now.

[Big Kev]

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is landing in about 6 hours. Looks like a massively over complicated landng system with parachutes, rockets and a sci-fi drop ship affair. Hopefully it'l all work fine.

By the way I got round to listening to 13 Minutes to the Moon Season 2 about the Apollo 13 incident. Excellent stuff. It's amazing how much dialogue from the film was actual word for word things said at the time.

[durbster]

Yep, I'll be following that tonight.

I'm looking forward to seeing if the little helicopter thing works later on.

[Big Kev]

Come on little car!

Radar lock on the ground, parachute deployed and the heat shield has successfully detached.

[Big Kev]

Parachute detached and rockets are on. 2km to go!

[Big Kev]

20m to go and it's dropped down on the cables

TOUCHDOWN! w00p!

[Big Kev]

Signal from the rover confirmed and first image coming in already.

[Big Kev]

[durbster]

Incredible stuff. Can't believe how chilled they seemed in the control room.

Just go to test that helicopter now

[norbs]

Is it just me, or do you guys find it hard to believe they can do this shit?

I love it.

[pixelboy]

Yeah its nuts..

[Big Kev]

Absolutely Norbs.
I also found it astonishing that they had that jpg about 2 minutes after it landed! If they could speed up the data transfer rate they could almost have watched it in real time. Can't wait to see the quality of the pictures and that helicopter.

[durbster]

I read this morning we might get full HD video of the landing too.

I do find it hard to grasp that there's a planet (and a comet) populated entirely by robots.

And one of them sings happy birthday to itself which gets me right in the feels every time I think about it.

[Big Kev]

[Big Kev]

I think I forgot to post this which I took on Christmas eve. Just happened to be an ISS crossing in line with my mum's back garden.

[w00dsy]

America is a weird place. The same week they land a rover on Mars Texas is a distaster area because they weren't prepared for snow.