I haven’t posted in while.  Its been a very busy semester, Thoroughly Modern Millie was great! Pictures may show up here soon.  
Right now Im watching NASA TV and the Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-125 preparing to dock with the Hubble Space Telescope! This is amazing!  

I have also been interested in Twitter lately.  Lots of fun.  
follow me at twitter.com/joeylicklider 

Ill try to update more often over the summer.

Today the astronauts on the International Space Station deployed the final set of Solar Array Wings that supply power to the orbiting laboratory.  This is a huge step that will allow up to 6 crew members to live long term on board and conduct more science experiments in space.

The total surface area of all the solar arrays is almost an acre!  This gives a lot of surface for light to reflect off and a better chance of seeing the complex pass overhead.  If you are interested in see the Space Station pass overhead, visit heavens-above.com and enter your location.  The site will tell you when and where to look when the station will fly over your area.  The best opportunities are just before sunrise and just after sunset.  If the angle of the sun and the position of the station line up just right, it makes for a spectacular sighting.

A new set of 'wings' for the Space Station

Image credit: NASASpaceflight.com and nasa.gov

On Sunday March 16, STS-119 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center.  With an extra passenger.  A small free-tail bat decided rest on the foam of the large External Tank over night.  During the day, NASA personnel expected the bat to fly away because of the cold temperatures when loading the tank with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen.  But the bat stayed for a lot longer than expected.  If the bat even survived Main engine startup, or even survived Solid Rocket Booster ignition, he would not have survived the rapid ascent to orbit.  And definitely would not survive the external tank reentry through the earth’s atmosphere.  

I’m glad to know JPAC is not the only place that has to deal with bats! But we don’t have the high powered image analysis team to see what they are really up to.  

Here’s a link to the story from NASA.

I saw this on a discussion forum I read a lot.  A girl is doing a postcard project to get cards from everywhere.  Might be kinda neat to see how it turns out.  I’ll send one or two in.

Postcard Project
Dear blog friends,
I’m working on an installation art piece called “Having a Good Time.” It examines postcards and family vacations, and the way that we memorialize these times through the ritual of photography. The vacation becomes what the photograph dictates to our memory.
Part of the project includes a rack of postcards from all over the world that the viewers can take home with them. They will say something like “Having a great time. Wish you were here,” or something else appropriate to a postcard.
I need your help to get lots of postcards. If you live somewhere exotic or somewhere mundane, as far away as Australia, or as close as Dallas, it doesn’t matter. Write a brief postcard (or 2) and send it to me. I need to get them by April 25. I hope to receive them from all over the US and the rest of the world as well. So if you’d like to post this to your blog, or pass it on to friends another way, please do so.
Send to:

Thanks ya’ll
Lomagirl 

On Tuesday two communications satellites collided with each other about 500 miles over northern Siberia.  This creates a big problem now for all the other satellites and space vehicles.  NASA says the biggest problem is all the little pieces floating around that they can’t track. 

According to chron.com:
“As of Wednesday, there were 9,831 pieces of manmade debris — not counting anything from Tuesday’s collision — orbiting Earth. The items, at least 4 inches in size, are being tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which is operated by the military. The network detected the two debris clouds created on Tuesday.”

That’s a lot of stuff out in the middle of nowhere!

Recently the cast of over 300 dolls of the It’s a Small World Ride at Disneyland in California was updated after nearly 40 years.  The doll figure, or audio-animatronics, all got new costumes. And even a few new characters were added.  

I read an article about the costume designer for the figures, and she said the dolls are actually wearing a complete outfit.  Even underwear and undershirts and socks.

This week has some history to it for NASA.  But the news isn’t always good.

On January 27, 1967 three Astronauts were killed in the “plugs out” test of Apollo 1.

On January 28, 1986 Space shuttle Challenger exploded a few minutes after liftoff.  

Coming up is the date of Space Shuttle Columbia breaking up during reentry from their mission.  February 1.  

It is terrible that the crew members were lost in the accidents, but they have allowed greater safety measures and checks for all future missions.  

Image credits: nasa.gov

Tomorrow night is going to be a BIG full moon.  The moon is at its perigee.  That means its at its closest to Earth on its elliptical orbit.  

Here’s some more info.

Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not a circle; it is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. Astronomers call the point of closest approach “perigee,” and that is where the Moon will be this weekend.

Perigee full Moons come along once or twice a year. 2008 ended with one and now 2009 is beginning with another. It’s the best kind of déjà vu for people who love the magic of a moonlit landscape.

January is a snowy month in the northern hemisphere, and the combination of snow + perigee moonlight is simply amazing. When the Moon soars overhead at midnight, the white terrain springs to life with a reflected glow that banishes night, yet is not the same as day. You can read a newspaper, ride a bike, write a letter, and at the same time count the stars overhead. It is an otherworldly experience that really must be sampled first hand.

Today is the last day of 2008!  Seems really strange.

2008 is a leap year, which means today is the 366th day of the year.  Also, ‘the powers that be’ have decided thats not enough to correct the fluctuations of the earths rotation.  They are adding a ‘leap second’ today.  Here is an explanation from timeanddate.com.

A leap second will be added to atomic clocks worldwide at 23:59:60 (or near midnight) at Coordinated Universal Time(UTC) on December 31, 2008. This is the 24th leap second to be added since the first leap second was added in 1972. This is also the first leap second in three years.

The actual local time for the leap second will depend on your time zone. Here are the corresponding times in different locations around the world.

Basic Details about the Leap Second

A leap second is a second, as measured by an atomic clock, added to or subtracted from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to make it agree with astronomical time to within 0.9 second. It compensates for slowing in the Earth’s rotation and is added during the end of June or December. It is important to look at how seconds are used in relation to modern time keeping to gain an understanding of the concept of the leap second and why it is used.

How Leap Seconds Declared?

The International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service (IERS) observes the Earth’s rotation and nearly 6 months in advance (January and July) a “Bulletin C” message is sent out, which reports whether or not to add a leap second in the end of June and December.

IERS schedules a leap second as needed to keep the time difference between atomic clocks and Earth’s rotation to below 0.9 seconds. IERS estimates that UT1 (Universal Time – based on Earth’s rotation) will be about 0.61 seconds behind UTC as year 2009 starts, so that after the leap second is added to UTC, UT1 will be ahead of UTC by about 0.39 seconds.

How are Leap Seconds Inserted?

Leap seconds are inserted at the end of June or December as an additional second after 23:59:59 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated). The additional second is the 61st second of the last minute of the month, and it is written as 23:59:60 (or 11:59:60 PM in 12-hour format).

The second is inserted at the same time all over the world – the actual local time will therefore depend on the time zone. Only regions in the UTC time zone will add the second just before midnight, for time zones east of UTC, the second will be added the next day (first day in January or July), for time zones west of UTC, the second will be added earlier on the same day as for UTC.