Cubesats Deployed from International Space Station

Astronaut Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA, has successfully deployed the first of the 33 CubeSats that were launched to the International Space Station in the Cygnus freighter on January 9th. The Tuesday, February 11th deployment consisted of the first two of the Flock-1 constellation of 28 Dove CubeSats made by Planet Labs.

In addition to the 28 Planet Labs micro-birds, there are also four amateur radio CubeSats waiting to be placed on-orbit. These are LituanicaSat-1, LitSat-1, ArduSat-2 and UAPSat-1 as well as a 915 MHz CubeSat SkyCube. All are planned to be deployed in the coming weeks.

Cape II Amateur Radio Satellite Cube OSCAR 75 or LO-75

The Cape II ham radio satellite is now known as the University of Louisiana OSCAR 75 or LO-75. This according to OSCAR Number Administrator Bill Tynan, W3XO, who recently informed AMSAT mentor Nick Pugh, K5QXJ, of the decision.

The CAPE II ham satellite operates on 145.825 MHz FM with a CW beacon signing the call W5UL. The bird also includes a digipeaters, text to speech operation, a simplex repeater, e-mail and tweet functions. The ground station software can be downloaded at www.ulcape.org

Going to Space: Send Your Name to the Asteroid Bennu

If you have ever wanted to vicariously into space, now is your chance. NASA is inviting people around the world including ham radio operators to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard a spacecraft headed to the asteroid Bennu in 2016.

The "Messages to Bennu" microchip will travel to the asteroid aboard the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the asteroid, which has a width of only about 1,760 feet. The spacecraft will collect a sample of Bennu's surface and then return it to Earth .

The deadline to submit your name online is Sept. 30, 2014. Participants who submit their names to the "Messages to Bennu" campaign will be able to print a certificate of appreciation to document their involvement. To submit your name for inclusion on this mission please take your web browser to planetary.org/bennu. While there are no instructions as to how to how to include your callsign, we found it simple to just put it right after your last name. (ANS, NASA)

Earth and Moon Viewer

What an incredible e-mail.
Lots of great info here.

Welcome to Earth and Moon Viewer.

Viewing the Earth

You can view either a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the Earth from the Sun, the Moon, the night side of the Earth, above any location on the planet specified by latitude, longitude and altitude, from a satellite in Earth orbit, or above various cities around the globe.

Images can be generated based on a full-colour image of the Earth by day and night, a topographical map of the Earth, up-to-date weather satellite imagery, or a composite image of cloud cover superimposed on a map of the Earth, a colour composite which shows clouds, land and sea temperatures, and ice, or the global distribution of water vapour. Expert mode allows you additional control over the generation of the image. You can compose a custom request with frequently-used parameters and save it as a hotlist or bookmark item in your browser. Please consult the Details for additional information and answers to frequently-asked questions.

Viewing the Moon

In addition to the Earth, you can also view the Moon from the Earth, Sun, night side, above named formations on the lunar surface. or as a map showing day and night. You can also make expert and custom images of the Moon. A related document compares the appearance of the Moon at perigee and apogee, including an interactive Perigee and Apogee Calculator.

Browser Requirements

To use the Earth and Moon Viewer, you need a graphical Web browser with forms support and the ability to display GIF and JPEG images. In order to pan around the map or globe by clicking within the image, your browser must support "Client-Side Image Maps"—if you don't know what this means, don't worry: if your browser doesn't support the feature, you'll see a page which explains how to proceed.

Credits

The Earth and Moon Viewer would have been enormously more difficult to implement without the help of the software and imagery mentioned in the credits.

Related Software on this Site

Windows users can create images like this in real time, on their own machines, as well as view the sky, stars at the horizon, the solar system, orbits of asteroids and comets, and more with Home Planet, my public domain Earth/Space/Sky simulator available for your downloading pleasure. Other public domain astronomy and space software available from the same site includes:

On the Web:

Eclipse 2010 — Aku Aku Eclipse, Eclipse 2008 — Nuclear Ninety North, Eclipse 2001 — In Darkness: Africa, and Eclipse 1999 — Expedition to Iran.

Moon at Perigee and Apogee.

Solar System Live: interactive orrery.

Switzerland from Space.

Terranova: a new terraformed planet every day.

Your Sky makes custom star maps for any location on Earth at any date and time.

For Windows:

Home Planet, Earth screen saver, Sky screen saver, Moontool, Craters screen saver, and an Excel catalogue of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.

For Unix (X/OpenWindows):

Moontool, and Xsunclock.

Laser Speed Demo in Space

NASA has used laser technology to transfer data over the 239,000 miles to and from the moon. This at a speed of 622 megabits per second.

Badri Younes is NASA's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation. In a press release he said that his agency is encouraged by the results of the demonstration of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration to this point. As such NASA is confident that it is on the right path to introduce this new capability into operational service soon.

The space agency’s Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration is the first two-way space communication system to use a laser instead of radio. Younes calls it the first step on NASA’s roadmap toward building the next generation of space communication capability.

The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration is hosted on NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE satellite. (NASA)

LADEE Spacecraft goes into Lunar Orbit

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE spacecraft fired its engines Sunday morning, October 6th, slowing it enough to be captured by lunar gravity and placing it into orbit around the Moon. Once given the green light the spacecraft will begin its mission to study the Moon's exotic and almost transparent atmosphere, which is highly affected by space weather. That information will be sent by radio back to Earth for further analysis.

Canterbury, New Zealand

Nighttime in Africa

WATCH: Meteorite Crash in Russia - UFO fears spark panic in the Urals

Metorite Impacts Russia; 500 injured.

Meteorite hits Russian Urals: Fireball explosion wreaks havoc, up to 500 injured (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Click Here

http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/

Close Earth Flyby of Asteroid

At 2:25 p.m. EST (19:25 UTC) on Friday, Feb. 15th, asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface. This will put it well inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, closer than any asteroid of the same size has come since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s. Researchers speculate that Earth's gravity might even cause seismic activity on the 50m-wide space rock. Click to view a computer simulation of the flyby, courtesy of NASA:

During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem is speed. The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track. Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed. For the rest of us, NASA will broadcast the asteroid's flyby on NASA TV.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about the same size as previous asteroids responsible for the Meteor Crater in Arizona and the Tunguska Event in Siberia. Unlike those objects, however, 2012 DA14 will not hit Earth. Even if seismic activity breaks the asteroid apart, there is no danger; the fragments would continue along the same non-intersecting path as the original asteroid.

source;
SpaceWeather.com 
 http://spaceweather.com/

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130201315144.html

Venus and Jupiter at Sunset

The brightest planets in the night sky are aligning for a must-see show in late February and March 2012. You can start looking tonight.

[video]

[full story]

Earth-directed CME to Impact on Jan. 21, 2012

Active sunspot 1401 erupted yesterday, Jan. 19th around 16:30 UT, producing an M3-class solar flare and a full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME). The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the cloud expanding almost directly toward Earth:


Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud arrives this weekend. Their animated forecast track predicts an impact on Jan. 21st at 22:30 UT (+/- 7 hrs).
The cloud is also heading for Mars, due to hit the Red Planet on Jan. 24th. NASA's Curiosity rover, en route to Mars now, is equipped to study solar storms and might be able to detect a change in the energetic particle environment when the CME passes by.

CME expected at Earth on 28 December 2011

New sunspot 1387 erupted during the late hours of Christmas Day, producing an M4-class flare and hurling a CME toward Earth and Mars. Click to view an animated forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab:



The CME is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 28th at 1200 UT and a direct hit to the planet Mars on Dec. 30th at 1800 UT. Using onboard radiation sensors, NASA's Curiosity rover might be able to sense the CME when it passes the rover's spacecraft en route to Mars. Here on Earth, NOAA forecasters estimate a 30-to-40% chance of geomagnetic storms on Dec. 28th when the CME and an incoming solar wind stream (unrelated to the CME) could arrive in quick succession.

Asteroid 2005 YU55

2005 YU55, an asteroid larger than an aircraft carrier, is expected to pass by Earth at 6:28 p.m. EST today, but NASA says there is no chance it will collide with the Earth or moon.
NASA radars are monitoring 2005 YU55, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier, as it heads for a flyby of the Earth-Moon system later today. There is no danger to our planet. At closest approach on Tuesday, Nov. 8th, at 3:28 pm PST (23:28 UT), the 400m-wide space rock will be 324,600 kilometers away, about 85% the distance from Earth to the Moon. Professional astronomers are eagerly anticipating the flyby as the asteroid presents an exceptionally strong radar target. Powerful transmitters at Goldstone and Arecibo will ping the space rock as it passes by, revealing the asteroid's shape and texture in crisp detail, and pinpointing its orbit for future flyby calculations.

Asteroids this big have passed by Earth at similar distances many times before, but this is the first time astronomers have known about the flyby in advance. For instance, a similar encounter occurred in 1976 when 2010 XC15 split the distance between Earth and the Moon. Researchers didn't discover that space rock until 24 years after the flyby. The Nov. 8, 2011, passage of 2005 YU55 thus represents a rare opportunity for asteroid research.

Experienced amateur astronomers should be able to photograph 2005 YU55 as it zips through the constellations Aquila and Pegasus glowing like an 11th magnitude star. Even under the full moonlight of Nov. 8th, such a bright asteroid is within reach of mid-sized backyard telescopes. The timing of the flyby favors observers in western Europe and eastern parts of North America. Check Sky & Telescope for observing tips or go straight to JPL for the object's ephemeris.

Comet Elenin

Today the world will not end! The supposed “Doomsday” comet Elenin will pass by, but at 35 million km or 90 times the Earth Moon distance, it will have NO effect on us at all.

It is about 3-5km wide and has the consistency of a slushee or snowy dirtball. It is so feeble that a strong solar storm in August appears to broken it into smaller pieces. Rising in the east very early in the morning at magnitude 10 it is not visible to the eye or even moderate sized telescope. An image by Michael Mattiazzo can be seen at:
http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/sc.htm

GEOMAGNETIC STORM

GEOMAGNETIC STORM: A CME hit Earth's magnetic field on Sept. 9th, and the impact ignited a geomagnetic storm, in progress. Northern Lights have since been spotted in the United States as far south as as Michigan, Montana and North Dakota. This could be the first of several hits from a series of CMEs expected to reach Earth during the weekend, so more geomagnetic activity is in the offing~

Remember, Geomagnetic storms can cause difficulties in communicating over long distances

Many communication systems utilize the ionosphere to reflect radio signals over long distances. Ionospheric storms can affect radio communication at all latitudes. Some radio frequencies are absorbed and others are reflected, leading to rapidly fluctuating signals and unexpected propagation paths. TV and commercial radio stations are little affected by solar activity, but ground-to-air, ship-to-shore, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and amateur radio are frequently disrupted. Radio operators using high frequencies rely upon solar and geomagnetic alerts to keep their communication circuits up and running.

Some military detection or early-warning systems are also affected by solar activity. The Over-the-Horizon Radar bounces signals off the ionosphere in order to monitor the launch of aircraft and missiles from long distances. During geomagnetic storms, this system can be severely hampered by radio clutter. Some submarine detection systems use the magnetic signatures of submarines as one input to their locating schemes. Geomagnetic storms can mask and distort these signals.

More info; http://www.arrl.org/news/the-k7ra-solar-update-181

Massive X6.9 Class Solar Flare

August 9, 2011 - The largest flare of the solar cycle, an R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout, alternatively classified as an X6, occurred today at 0805Z. Region 1263, now poised near the west limb, produced the event and a few others of lesser magnitude in the past day. The region remains hot at this writing.

A quick rise in the protons at GOES reached S1 (Minor) levels soon after the eruption. Given the location of the activity, any CMEs would likely be directed away from Earth so no significant Geomagnetic Storm activity is forecast.

*Solar Storms May Disrupt Gadgets

*Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth

Asteroid to Disappear?

Asteroid Occulatation;
On July 3rd at 11:05:30 p.m. EDT, a 10th magnitude star in Virgo will disappear. It'll be right back. Asteroid 52 Europa will pass in front of TYC 0292-00339-1, blotting it out for only 17.9 seconds in an eclipse visible across a wide strip of North America. Measurements of the eclipse could reveal the shape of the asteroid, the seventh largest in the asteroid belt. NASA is hosting a live chat and webcast to cover the event: Tune in here.

Definition of OCCULTATION

1: the state of being hidden from view or lost to notice

2: the interruption of the light from a celestial body or of the signals from a spacecraft by the intervention of a celestial body; especially : an eclipse of a star or planet by the moon

Chance of Solar Flares

The magnetic field of sunspot 1236 harbors energy for M-class solar flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of such an eruption during the next 24 hrs.