Posted by Chris Radcliff in Calendar on January 26, 2009
Sun, Feb 15, 2009
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Location:
Space Exploration Technologies
1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne, CA
Thanks to Joel Brinton, a former Mars Society San Diego member who now works as an avionics engineer at SpaceX, SD Space members have been offered a behind-the-scenes tour of the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne (near LAX). Join us to see the Falcon 9 rocket in development.
Some members plan to attend the monthly meeting of the Orange County Space Society afterwards.
UPDATE 9 February: all spots on the tour have been filled. Those who indicated interest should have received either a confirmation email or notification that the tour has been filled. If you haven’t, email events@sdspace.org as soon as possible.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in News on January 23, 2009
The kind folks at the X Prize Foundation are offering a limited number of free patches from Anousheh Ansari’s mission to the ISS.
Want an awesome patch, just like the one that Anousheh Ansari wore on her trip to the International Space Station? We’ve got a whole bunch of them and we’re giving them away to you!
Getting a patch requires sending a self-addressed stamped envelope; full instructions are available at the original post. I’ll be getting one for Ben’s flight suit, and perhaps one for my own as well.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in News on January 18, 2009
Sometimes the only way to make something truly great is to ask the impossible. Or at least the very-nearly-impossible. And that’s just what the N-Prize is doing:
The N-Prize offers two cash Prizes, each of £9,999.99 (nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence, sterling).
The prizes will be awarded to the first persons or groups to put into orbit around the Earth a satellite with a mass of between 9.99 and 19.99 grams, and to prove that it has completed at least 9 orbits.
Left there, it might be an interesting footnote in the history of space prizes, accompanied by a wink and a chuckle. But then you dig deeper and you see the teams. All thirteen teams. The work they’ve done already is really something. For example, Team Prometheus was just recently in the news, according to a recent press release:
News 8 Austin’s Crestina Chavez interviewed Monroe L. King Jr. founder of Team Prometheus on local television about their attempt at winning the N-Prize.
The team unveiled their second stage Rocket model at the interview. Supported by Executive Officer Basil Attal Jr., this is on display as the second stage of a four stage assault at achieving low earth orbit and delivering a 20 gram satellite into at least 9 orbits.
Well done! We congratulate Team Prometheus and the other N-Prize participants for their hard work and wish them success.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in Calendar on January 16, 2009
Sat, Jan 17, 2009
3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Location:
El Dorado Public Library (map)
2900 Studebaker Rd, Long Beach, CA
OASIS invites you to a lecture by David E. Barnhart, Assoc. Director, Space Engineering Research Center
“Not Your Parents Lunar Lander; USC’s Project Leapfrog”
Admission Free
This event is not library-sponsored
A Return to the Moon requires a new generation of rocket engineers. Decades removed from the Apollo program that trained an earlier generation, they need to innovate on a deadline, using the latest technology to construct low-cost prototypes for testing and evaluation. Where can future rocket engineers learn these skills? Look to USC.
David A. Barnhart will explain how Project LEAPFROG is providing USC students the opportunity to design, build, and test a low cost, working model of a lunar lander. The hovering platform will demonstrate descent and landing profiles similar to those performed on the Moon. Placed in a tightly integrated team environment, these future engineers gain valuable aerospace experience — the sort their parents may have gotten working on Apollo.
Mr. Barnhart is manager of Project LEAPFROG. He has a Master of Science degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in News on January 15, 2009
You may have already heard the exciting news about finding methane on Mars, but this video with Michael Mumma puts an interesting spin on it:
The surprising thing about methane on Mars is that–first, that we detect it meaning it’s recently generated. But in addition, we find that it’s being released from several discrete vents–or sites–on the planet’s surface in either mid-summer in the northern hemisphere or early spring in the southern hemisphere on Mars, and yet at a later season, we see essentially no methane.
[...] One of the most important consequences of our discoveries is that we’ve identified certain “signposts” on Mars that basically are like little flags that say, “Come here, here I am.” NASA has several missions along these lines; one is called the Mars Science Laboratory. One of the key objectives is to understand whether life ever arose on Mars by sampling the material on the surface and then evaluating that in terms of its origins. You can then appreciate that if you go to this right location, you may in fact be able to identify whether biology was at work, or geochemistry.
So not only does this give us yet another reason to go to Mars, it gives us a some specific places to look for life when we get there.
