The return of the ISEE 3

http://spacecraftforall.com/home


Great website with cool interactive documentary-like experience! Check it out! Also, it'll be live-streaming the fly-by of the moon in a few hours (Sunday, August 10th 10:30am PT - 12:00pm PT) , but I'll be asleep. Also includes live data anytime! =)

This whole project was crowdfunded and they (the hackers/makers) work in a hackerspace/mission-control in an old Maccas building! Lol! And with NASA's blessing =) Them talking about *SCIENCE* so much reminds me of stuff like Portal, xkcd, KSP (get them science points!) haha.

Also, great post about SoftwareDefinedRadio; been meaning to get my HAM radio callsign sometime soon ...

Also, the initial swing-bys to get to the 1st comet flown through by man is so cool and complicated, it reminded me of an epic version of this:

I mean, orbiting in one plane is hard enough to learn (in a fun way) in KSP. Add in polar plane and crazy manoeuvres and orbits like Quasi-Zenith and I have to spend more time wrapping my head around more simulations, models and reading.
P.S. My short-term goal is to build and launch a (nano)sat in one of them Quasi-Zenith orbits servicing Australia =P Hopefully I'll get to crowdfunding when I've actually done work on it xP.

SpaceX reusable rocket video (SpaceX does it again!)

So reusability landing footage from last week's successful SpaceX-Orbcomm mission has been released by SpaceX! Apparently this time no file repairing was needed like last time when they crowd-sourced help for repairing their mpeg via reddit =P.
There is however, icing, which blurs/obscures the video quite a bit.



SpaceX's full blog/news post (quoted at the end) has more information, including that they touched down at close to 0 velocity, and the next 2 flights they will not attempt reusability tests since they are higher orbits (GTO). However, after that on flights 13,they will test landing on water and (flights 14, 15) on solid ground with increased chance of success. Apparently it's easier to land on land than on water?! (It could however, be just a platform in the ocean.)
I'm guessing they have great control over where they're able to land. (It's harder to gauge when and how to burn by eye/hand when landing from orbit to KSC in KSP -which was recently 40% off on Steam and now features contracts and rewards for recovery of things like boosters/stages =P)

Here's the full quote from the SpaceX blog (because the info is so juicy):

Following last week's successful launch of six ORBCOMM satellites, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage reentered Earth’s atmosphere and soft landed in the Atlantic Ocean. This test confirms that the Falcon 9 booster is able consistently to reenter from space at hypersonic velocity, restart main engines twice, deploy landing legs and touch down at near zero velocity.

After landing, the vehicle tipped sideways as planned to its final water safing state in a nearly horizontal position. The water impact caused loss of hull integrity, but we received all the necessary data to achieve a successful landing on a future flight. Going forward, we are taking steps to minimize the build up of ice and spots on the camera housing in order to gather improved video on future launches.

At this point, we are highly confident of being able to land successfully on a floating launch pad or back at the launch site and refly the rocket with no required refurbishment. However, our next couple launches are for very high velocity geostationary satellite missions, which don’t allow enough residual propellant for landing. In the longer term, missions like that will fly on Falcon Heavy, but until then Falcon 9 will need to fly in expendable mode.

We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success. Flights 14 and 15 will attempt to land on a solid surface with an improved probability of success.

Space Age, here we come!!! =D