Archive for the ‘Satellite’ Category

Space Object Plays Chicken with the ISS – Astronauts Forced to Hunker Down in Capsule

Saturday, July 18th, 2015

Early this morning the ISS and a piece of debris from an old Russian weather satellite almost gave one another a bro-like chest bump.

Astronauts had an hour and a half to secure as many of the ISS’s individual modules and get themselves hunkered down into their escape pod (the Soyuz capsule attached to the ISS) and nervously wait to see how it would play out.

While that’s the official word there are a lot of humans on the ground declaring that that’s what NASA wants you to believe and that the “space object” was actually a UFO doing a drive-by of the ISS.

Thankfully the debris or whatever it was went by without incident. NASA gave the astronauts the all-clear a few minutes later.

While safe it’s still a terrifying scenario because orbit is pretty is pretty predictable once things are in it…

But there’s that old saying…

What goes around comes around.

Let’s just hope that’s all it is…an old saying…

Or just a UFO flying by.

[WIRED]

Posted in Astronaut, International Space Station, ISS, Russia, Satellite, Science, Space, Space Objects, Space Station, Stars, UFO | Comments Off on Space Object Plays Chicken with the ISS – Astronauts Forced to Hunker Down in Capsule

Record Made with Conductive Paint to Create “Music” – Sounds More Like Angry, Drunk R2D2

Friday, July 10th, 2015

Two researchers at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design recently decided to make a record utilizing conductive paint.

Conductive paint is awesome…just think of it as paintable wiring.

Sounds great, right?

It is…unless you decided to make a record utilizing conductive paint.

“Conductive paint and resistive graphite were used to draw functioning circuits on paper disks. When the synthesizer completes the circuit its pitch is changed by the varying resistance of the graphite strips.”

The “varying resistance” ends up sounding like a very angry, very drunk R2D2 with an ear-piercingly bad motivator.

[Gizmodo]

Posted in Experiment, Record, Satellite, Weirdest Inventions | Comments Off on Record Made with Conductive Paint to Create “Music” – Sounds More Like Angry, Drunk R2D2

Charon Photobombs New Horizon Photo of Pluto

Thursday, July 9th, 2015

Back in 2006 the New Horizon space probe left Earth on mission to visit Pluto.

On July 14th of this year, New Horizon will finally reach its destination and give us a closer look at the piece of rock that was once on the a-list of planets in our neighborhood.

In January New Horizon was brought out of hibernation in preparation for its approach to Pluto.

As photos began coming back showing Pluto in more detail than we’ve ever seen, scientists were a little bummed they weren’t seeing much of Pluto’s little moon-buddy, Charon. That all changed as scientists merged photos from the RALPH and LORRI cameras onboard the probe.

Suddenly they could plainly see the photobombing moon of Charon in the background of the Pluto photos they already had.

New Horizon’s mission includes mapping Pluto (and possibly Charon) and gathering as much info as possible about Pluto. Once it heads away from Pluto it will try to collect information about any object it can come across in the Kuiper Belt before moving into who-knows-where.

[WIRED]

Posted in Astronomy, Charon, Discovery, Planets, Pluto, Satellite, Solar System, Space, Space Objects, Space Probe, Stars | Comments Off on Charon Photobombs New Horizon Photo of Pluto