Just, wow.
(Source: caitlynkurilich)
Animal Attacks
I have a pet which will bully me off of their territory by charging at me. I pick it up at my own risk, as they will repeatedly scratch me and wave their limbs about with no known reasoning behind such motion, until I put it down. Even then they will again turn around and charge at me, ‘To see me off’.
They will throw their food around, all over the place. They will try to attack me at every opportunity and they seem to consciously make an effort in keeping me awake at night.
What kind of animal am I talking about?
My Hermann’s Tortoise. Yes, a tortoise. A tortoise, who is not even the size of my hand, but my cat will avoid it. I’ve never seen such a stubborn animal, however, she makes me proud to be her owner.
And, the same as me, she likes to eat.
Earth Photography: It’s Harder Than It Looks
From my orbital perspective, I am sitting still and Earth is moving. I sit above the grandest of all globes spinning below my feet, and watch the world speed by at an amazing eight kilometers per second (288 miles per minute, or 17,300 miles per hour).
This makes Earth photography complicated.
Even with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second, eight meters (26 feet) of motion occurs during the exposure. Our 400-millimeter telephoto lens has a resolution of less than three meters on the ground. Simply pointing at a target and squeezing the shutter always yields a less-than-perfect image, and precise manual tracking must be done to capture truly sharp pictures. It usually takes a new space station crewmember a month of on-orbit practice to use the full capability of this telephoto lens.
Galileo Spacecraft: Antenna Failure
Galileo was an unmanned spacecraft sent by NASA to study the planet Jupiter and its moons. Named after the astronomer and Renaissance pioneer Galileo Galilei, it was launched on October 18, 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. It arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, a little more than six years later, via gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth.
For reasons which in all likelihood will never be known with certainty, Galileo’s high-gain antenna failed to fully deploy after its first flyby of Earth. Investigators speculate that during the time that Galileo spent in storage after the 1986 Challenger disaster, its lubricants evaporated, damaging the system. Engineers tried thermal-cycling the antenna, rotating the spacecraft up to its maximum spin rate of 10.5 rpm, and “hammering” the antenna deployment motors—turning them on and off repeatedly—over 13,000 times; all attempts failed to open the high-gain antenna. The reduction in available bandwidth reduced the total amount of data transmitted throughout the mission, although 70% of Galileo’s science goals could still be met.
Images above are artist’s concept of Galileo at Jupiter with its high-gain antenna only partially deployed versus fully deployed.
Celestial Globes
Moon, Venus, Mars, and constellation globes available for purchase at Greenwood Space Travel Supply.
(via: Super Punch)
I really want one now. :P
