30 April 2009

Congress has a proposal on the table that could extend the life of the Shuttle by one year. It may come up for a final vote next week. So far it is all hot air as they haven't put any money where their mouth is.

Space.com

NASA hasn't gotten the replacement for the Shuttle built yet and already they are cutting corners. Space.com is reporting that they plan not to build the six-person capsule that was to transport crews up to ISS and will now concentrate only on the four-person capsule to be used in the next Moon landings. The article says that NASA will rely on Russia and Europe and Japan who have not flown to the station yet and commercial carriers who have not even test-flown their craft yet (not that NASA has test flown the CEV either) to ferry crews to ISS until the six-person capsule is eventually built sometime after the four-person capsule is completed.

And although they haven't launched the first test rocket for the capsule yet they are already talking about either cancelling the second test launch or combining it with a capsule test. When I was working on computers they always said to make one change at a time so if something went wrong you would know where to look for it. I would think the same would apply to rocket science.

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Sunspots Observed

I was not able to do any solar observing this month. There hasn't been anything much to observe again this month anyway.

Observing Hours for the Year 2009

	Day			Night			Total
	Hours	Days	Avg	Hours	Days	Avg	Hours	Days	Avg
Jan	0.50	2	0.25	0.25	1	0.25	0.75	2	0.38
Feb	2.75	11	0.25	2.50	9	0.28	2.25	14	0.38
Mar	0.00	0	0.0	4.00	7	0.57	4.00	7	0.57
Apr	0.25	1	0.25	0.75	2	0.38	1.00	2	0.50
TOTAL	3.50	14	0.25	7.50	19	0.39	11.00	25	0.44

29 April 2009

Observing Location	Madison Ave @ 36 St, New York, NY Lat.: 40° 44′ 54.92″ Long.: -73° 58′ 53.18″
Observational Period	2030 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Scattered Clouds Temperature 52°F Wind Light Breeze Humidity Moderate Barometric Pressure 30.47" Hg Falling Feels Like Cool From where we were I could only see one stripe of cloud but when I got down to Madison Square Park where I had a somewhat more open horizon the sky was about 50% covered. Transparency Fair Seeing
Instruments	Naked-eye - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Peter Tagatac

I met Peter tonight at SIBL for a lecture on the architecture of Central park.

He gave me an astronomy diary that he brought back for me when he was in Japan around the New Year. Everything but the numbers and pictures is in Kanji but I am figuring some of it out.

After the lecture we went to a nearby Starbucks and talked about astronomy and miscellaneous other stuff. When we left the Starbucks I looked up and the sky above Madison Ave appeared mostly clear. I saw a star and then as my eyes adjusted to the darker light three more. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that that first star was Saturn and the others were part of Leo’s body. I knew Regulus and Denebola and Peter came up with Algieba. He saw the haunch star (Zosma) and I detected something out in that area. I didn’t see the rest of the Cycle stars but didn’t spend a lot of time looking for them.

25 April 2009

The HST Servicing Mission has officially been moved forward to 11May09. The Spaceflight Now article doesn't mention it but I think that date will still have to pass a Flight Readiness Review closer to the launch date. A short story on Space.com says there will be a Flight Readiness Review on 30Apr09 but they have changed their web page so I can't link to their stories or even print them to read offline.

Spaceflight Now

24 April 2009

I walked through Union Square to assess its astronomy potential now that the leaves are starting to come out. The only place I could see a significant portion of the sky was in the transverse walk through the park down around 15 St. The sky is already limited without the trees being fully leaved out and even with a clear sky I could only find 5 isolated stars.

24 April 2009

NASA is assessing the possibility of advancing the HST Servicing Mission by one day. There will be some military activity at the Cape beginning on 14May09 that will prevent a launch for about a week after that date so NASA wants to move the launch forward one day to 11May09 so they have a longer launch window. They say they will be ready to fly on that date but are not sure the Hubble scientists can have their toys ready by then. More assessments are being made today.

	Date	Time
Current	12May09	1331 EDT
Proposed	11May09	1401 EDT

Atlantis will launch to make the repairs/upgrades to HST. In the event that Atlantis is damaged by ET foam or space debris it can not go to ISS as a safe haven as the ISS construction flights plan to do. This is because HST orbits 100 miles higher than ISS and at a different orbital inclination and the shuttles don't have enough fuel to match orbits. So Endeavour, which is scheduled to fly the next ISS construction mission on 13Jun09 is on the adjacent launch pat ready to fly a rescue mission if necessary. It could take up to 25 days for that rescue to be accomplished. It will be a very long wait in a small space for the seven members of the Atlantis crew. I haven't seen anything on how they would be accommodated on board Endeavour with its four person rescue crew or how Atlantis would be safely ditched.

Spaceflight Now
Space.com

22 April 2009

Space.com
NASA

20 April 2008

Today is the start of National Dark Sky Week. It will rain and be cloudy all night tonight and at least cloudy most of the rest of the week.