Road trip to venus!
The
Venus Express was
launched on Nov. 9th, 2005 from
Baikonur, the
historic spaceport in Kazakhstan. It is the first Venus probe sent by the
ESA , and you can
follow it's progress on the six month journey to the planet.
Exploration of
Venus begin in 1962 with
Mariner 2, the first space probe to fly by another planet and other flights, including the Russian
Venera 7, which was the first probe to land on another planet. The Soviets took quite an interest in Venus and
dominated the exploration of the planet through the '70s and '80s. A lot of the images recorded by those early craft have been
reprocessed with modern technology.
In the early '90s the
Magellan spacecraft spent several years
mapping the surface of Venus, providing us
many,
many,
many images and
3D maps of
the planet.
As for
Venus Express, it's goal is to spend two years making detailed studys of
the planet's clouds and atmosphere.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Nov 13, 2005 -
19 comments
In just over two hours,
Cosmos 1, the world's first experimental "solar sail" spacecraft will launch, and reportedly
will be visible "from nearly everywhere on its surface at one time or another".
posted by theonetruebix
on Jun 21, 2005 -
19 comments
Move over X-Prize - in order to win the next big space prize($50 million) one will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.
posted by sourbrew
on Nov 8, 2004 -
15 comments
Pull up! Pull up! Several detailed Quicktime VR tours of aircraft and spacecraft cockpits, from the National Air & Space Museum.
[QTVR plugin required, natch.]
posted by stonerose
on Feb 6, 2004 -
6 comments
An Elevator to the Stars. The paper of record claims this isn't science fiction, but do we really believe that in ten years we'll be able to build a 60,000 mile long cable capable of supporting 13 ton cargo loads? Would you trust this to take you into asynchronous orbit? (Or maybe you just want to make like Joe Kittinger and
jump out at 100,000 feet.)
posted by alms
on Sep 23, 2003 -
24 comments
NASA's Official 'Galileo Dies' Page. Galileo is set to crash into Jupiter on Sunday. Responsible for many great
images and tons of information, Galileo served well. Find a complete history of the Galileo mission
here. Also, don't forget to watch the End of Mission webcast this Sunday at approx. 2 PM EST
here.
posted by Ufez Jones
on Sep 16, 2003 -
7 comments
Multi Genre Star Ship Comparison? "This site is intended to allow science fiction fans to get an impression of the true scale of their favorite science fiction spacecraft by being able to campare ships accross genres, as well as being able to compare them with contemporary objects with which they are probably familiar." Someone has spare time...
posted by Spoon
on Apr 10, 2003 -
25 comments
Swan song for a great explorer. Tomorow, the Galileo explorer will make a flyby of Jovian moon
Amalthea ending pehaps the geatest unmanned mission in NASA history. Galileo telemetry may not survive the flyby having already receieved much more radiation than it was designed for. Even if it does survive, this will be its final orbit scheduled to crash into Jupiter in September of next year. In spite of antenna difficulties, the spacecraft returned
many beautiful images of Jupiter's moons, along with coverage of the
Shoemaker-Levy collision and the first atmospheric probe to decend into Jupiter's weather.
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Nov 3, 2002 -
9 comments
There's something out there Target Body:
J002E3 Spacecraft (UNCONFIRMED)
Observer Location:
Los Angeles, CA
Coordinates:
118°14'27.6''W, 34°03'15.1''N
Since September 5th, the Minor Planet Mailing List (MPML) has been abuzz with speculation about an unidentified 16th- magnitude object. During the next 10 days the object will be moving rapidly across Aries and then Taurus, passing between the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters.
posted by riley370
on Sep 13, 2002 -
29 comments
Since 1965, the Pioneer 6 space probe has quietly maintained its orbit around the sun between Earth and Venus. This week, in commemoration of the anniversary of its launch, NASA will attempt to
re-establish contact with the oldest surviving spacecraft.
posted by jjg
on Dec 4, 2000 -
1 comment
