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1st European SpaceTweetup #Spacetacular!!

by @akanel on Nov 10, 2011 • No Comments

On 18 September, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR, @dlr_en) and the European Space Agency (ESA, @esa) invited 60 lucky Twitter followers to the first European SpaceTweetup. Among them some of our most prominent members, @flyingjenny, @herrea, @CraftLass, @travelholic, @amoroso, @marcozambi, @SpaceKate, @DrLucyRogers and @rocketman528. I (@akanel) was also lucky to be invited – and this was my first Tweetup ever!

The SpaceTweetup took place on German Aerospace Day at the joint DLR and European Astronaut Centre site in Cologne. It was an amazing day, which not even the German grey and rainy weather could spoil! …it did, of course, make our photographs a bit murky, but that’s about it!

The SpaceTweetup program was full and exciting. So many thrills packed inside approx. 10 hours that could have easily been the object of two or more separate events. For those who didn’t get to attend, a four hour (!) long selection of the best moments is available on ESA’s site.

SOFIA

Photo credit: @SimSullen

The day started very excitingly. We visited and learned about the SOFIΑ Project (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), DLR and NASA’s impressive airborne telescope. Mounted on a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified by L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, SOFIA has a 2.5 meter reflecting telescope, which makes measurements during flight! High above the disturbances caused by Earth’s atmosphere, but also easily accessible for maintenance and modifications, SOFIA combines the advantages of space telescopes, like Herschel and Hubble, with the ease of ground based telescopes.

The science done on SOFIA is planned by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under the leadership of NASA Ames Research Centre. Observing mostly in the far infrared, SOFIA will be used to study many different kinds of astronomical objects and phenomena, such as e.g. star birth and death, formation of new solar systems, identification of complex molecules in space (such as organic materials necessary for life), planets, comets and asteroids in our own solar system, nebulae and dust in galaxies and black holes at the centre of galaxies, helping to answer many fundamental questions about the creation and evolution of the Universe.

SOFIA Telescope. Photo credit: @Brigitte_Ba

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A4H Bruce Davis at the Presidential Space Summit

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 23, 2010 • No Comments

A4H’s very own Bruce Davis was among the select few invited to attend the Presidential Space Summit held at the NASA Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010. At the event, President Obama outlined his new strategy for human spaceflight, which includes the expanded support for commercial space transportation systems – the same systems that will also enable the nascent suborbital and eventually orbital science research community.

Bruce, who is pictured here with Norm Augustine, shared his impressions and photos from the event on his website spacedavis.com.

Education & Public Outreach / Events / Johnson Space Center / NASA / NASATweetup / Space Tweeps / Tweetups / Twitter

STS-130 Tweetup in Houston

by @Pillownaut on Feb 10, 2010 • 3 Comments

I’m overjoyed to be attending the STS-130 Tweetup in Houston on February 17th! Hoping to meet other SpaceTweeps there.

We’ll be gathering on the 10th day of the mission, whereby Shuttle Endeavour will have been docked for about a week. At this juncture, astronauts Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken will have already conducted two spacewalks to install the new Tranquility node.

If all goes according to the mission plan, we’ll be tweeting live from Johnson Space Center around the time they are outfitting the seven-windowed panoramic Cupola. (Cont’d–>)

The schedule is pretty packed, and I’m especially excited to see Astronaut Robert Satcher on the speaking docket! Bobby S. was the first orthopedic surgeon in space, just this past November on STS-129… so he’s fresh off a mission and probably quite keen to give presentations about his first trip into space.

On Earth, the “Zero-G M.D.” (catchy, huh?) has a background in Musculo-skeletal specialties; he is also now becoming involved in micro-gravity studies, and one of his own latest tweets shows the vertical treadmill used in one of the many NASA research studies.

If anyone has questions to ask an astronaut or JSC official, comment or tweet it! For those not traveling there, I’d love to report back on the events, and for those also attending, can’t wait to make your acquaintance!

ESA / Meco / Space Tweep Society

Visit to ESA EAC, DLR and Technik Museum Speyer: technical trip debriefing

by @amoroso@twitter on Jan 25, 2010 • 2 Comments

Imagine a dream trip to major space facilities, where you meet several astronauts. Add a visit to a geeky aerospace wonderland, and the opportunity to share the fun with your space enthusiast friends. I did such a trip.

From January 14 to 16, 2010, I did a short trip to Germany with Italian ForumAstronautico.it friends and space tweeps Giuseppe Albini (@GiuseppeAlbini), Luca Frigerio (@Spazionauta), Michael Sacchi (@signaleleven), Marco Zambianchi (@marcozambi) and Alberto Zampieron (@albyz85). We visited the ESA European Astronaut Centre (EAC) and a major DLR German aerospace agency facility in Cologne, and Technik Museum in Speyer. Space Tweep Society mascot Meco the Birdonaut was also part of the crew.

The trip was made possible by the kindness and assistance of our friend Samantha Cristoforetti, one of the new ESA ascans, whom we met with her colleagues.

Mission Day 1: ESA EAC and DLR

The first day we visited ESA EAC in Cologne. Samantha greeted us and joked that we were probably going to see more in the next few hours than she was able in past months. She and other ascans are so busy with basic training, that they spend most of the time there locked into classrooms.

Our excellent guide Stuart, a biomed support engineer, introduced EAC and showed us ATV (holy lift, it looks heavy) and ISS module mockups, and the Neutral Buoyancy Facility. We were able to venture inside the Node-2 Harmony and Columbus mockups. We also visited the ISS Medops control room while an EVA was under way.

Samantha later invited us for a coffee break with the ascans. They had an unexpected free moment due to a delayed lesson. After considerable deliberation, in which we mumbled something like “let us see, we are not that busy right now, this might fit in our schedule, sure, yeah, why not?”, we finally accepted. The whole decision process took approximately 0.012 seconds, possibly less.

After the coffee break Samantha and the ascans, um, well, “insisted” that we take group photos, which we did in front of the Node-2 and Columbus mockups another 0.012 seconds later. In the photos we wear sweatshirts with the patch of ISAA (Italian Space and Astronautics Association), our space outreach organization. I guess the ascans filed the experience under “survival training”.

Later that day another guide gave us a tour of the DLR facility. We saw such space treats as the Rosetta Philae lander control room, the ISS payload operations control room, and more. DLR has a scope similar to NASA’s in that it does both aviation and space, but it also deals with energy and transportation.

Mission Day 2: Technik Museum Speyer

The second day we drove over 250 km south to visit Technik Museum in Speyer. The museum is such a geek paradise, chock full of interesting and unique aerospace artifacts, that I don’t know where to start. There are many planes, helicopters and ships on display, most of which are walk-in exhibitions: you can freely enter the vehicles, explore them and take pictures. Kudos to the institution.

The most interesting space vehicle at Speyer is the OK-GLI Buran shuttle for atmospheric test flights, a sort of Soviet equivalent of the NASA Enteprise Shuttle. You can climb to the cargo bay and see the cockpit, or inspect Buran’s bowels by peeking inside the aft compartment through the floor hatch.

The large Buran building is packed with planes, cars, motorbikes, and all sorts of vechicles and machines. There are many more interesting space artifacts and flown items: the Soviet BOR-5 suborbital test vehicle (a Buran 1:8 scale model), Sokol and Orlan suits, Soyuz and Mir parts, you name it. So many things to see…

I almost forgot a minor item. In front of the Buran building there is a whole Lufthansa Boeing 747 arliner, which you can again freely enter and explore from the lower deck to the cockpit. What’s amazing about this sky giant is that it is not on the ground, but perched tens of meters above as if it was still flying. Mighty Jumbo.

Mission Day 3: sightseeing and wrapup

We spent the third and last day visiting downtown Cologne and the Cathedral, which stands taller than VAB. Before reentry we spent some wonderful time at an informal private gathering with ESA people. Thanks again to Samantha and all of them for the unique experience.

Just a few hours after we safely landed at Malpensa MXP airport, Samantha told that we had been lucky: all weather hell broke loose, and Cologne was in a snowstorm. Isn’t Buran the Russian for snowstorm?

Photos and videos

We took so many pictures, videos, panoramas and 3D anaglyphs that we are still downlinking and processing, er, posting them. The material is being collected in a few online places, which you may want to keep visiting to check the latest additions:

ForumAstronautico.it thread about the Germany trip: click photo thumbnails to enlarge, click number links after “Pagine:” at the top and bottom left to see more thread pages
Marco Zambianchi’s YouTube videos
my 2010 trip to Cologne Flickr collection
my YouTube videos

NASA / Opinion / Space Exploration / Space Policy

What is NASA? We know, but does the public?

by @thenasaman on Aug 3, 2009 • 3 Comments

Ask any space tweep if they know much about space, and most likely, you will get a paragraph for a response. Ask any random person in the public, and you’ll most likely just get an evil glance or a stammer. If they do know anything, they may tell you that Lance Armstrong was the first person on the moon. So, is NASA doing as great of a job as they can getting the word out about space?

The public is greatly losing interest in the American space program. During the stimulus plan that was created by President Obama, most major news networks posted on their lists that NASA received a decent sum of money. Unfortunately, most networks placed that on there just to point out the stupidity of where the president is spending tax payers money. Does this mean that to get people not to hate the space program, rather than Obama spending money on NASA, do we first have to get him to spend money to start a new cold war, maybe with China this time?

There are certain memories that many people have of our space program. Ask anybody who was alive in 1969 and old enough to understand what was going on where they were when man landed on the moon, they can tell you every detail. Yet, most of us tweeps that use the internet and twitter weren’t alive during that. Most of us, though, were alive to remember the negatives of our space program, such as the Challenger explosion or the less-remembered Columbia accident. So those that do have memories of where our space program is remember the bad, not the good.

NASA definelty needs to change their ways. The first being that their main way of communicating video events is by NASA TV, which is avaliable online or by satellite. The web address online isn’t even that easy to access, and only a few people that I know personally have satellite TV. Making it a more mainstream channel with more exciting files than kids trying to solve mysteries is one simple step to take. Another way is to have large events that entertain the public and actually benefit them. They want to know how space can help them now. Sometimes the best way to do it is to have a little fun with themselves. The perfect example is comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. He had his campaign to name the new ISS Node 3 Colbert. Sicne then, NASA has decided to name their new treadmill C.O.L.B.E.R.T. in his honor. You can guess that this launch will probably be more noted than others for this reason.

Next is to come up with an exciting destination. After the moon, the Apollo astronauts thought that by 2000 we would be going to the moon. Instead, we decided to go to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Great thought to NASA, but not to those down on the Earth, and even the 12 astronauts that walked on the moon, who wished to go further. Trying to keep with the craze of 2001: A Space Oddysey, we tried Skylab and Mir, both huge garbage heaps in space which soon littered the Earth.

It seems the only real way to get interest is to set our sights on a new destination, not an expensive moon base. I share the same beliefs as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who feels Mars should be our next destination. Who knows what is actually there. In 2003/2004, interest grew in space with Spirit and Opportunity, and their discoveries. This shows we still have an interest, and maybe people on Mars is the next best thing. Is it really? The only way to tell is to skip the moon and go to Mars. What about the ISS? Well, that’s another story, but there is still the option of keeping our international partners and using their aid to go to the red planet.

Whatever steps NASA takes, there will be scrutiny, but if it gets the public interest, I say go for it. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but curiosity is why we go beyond our Earth, and people need to realize that.