This Cassini image gives us a spectacular view of Saturn’s rings. This particular image was taken on July 26, 2006 at a distance of 1.4 million km.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

A NASA press release:

In the Quest airlock on the International Space Station, two spacesuits await a busy day of spacewalking. Credit: NASA

The International Space Station’s Expedition 13 crew members are a week away from their first U.S. spacewalk. They spent much of this week preparing themselves and their gear, and they activated a new laboratory super deep-freezer.

Astronauts Jeff Williams and Thomas Reiter will leave the station’s Quest airlock hatch at 9:55 a.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 3, for a spacewalk that is scheduled for six hours, 20 minutes. Station Commander Pavel Vinogradov will serve as the spacewalk choreographer from inside the complex. NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 9 a.m. EDT.

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Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are powerful eruptions that can blow up to 10 billion tons of the sun’s atmosphere into interplanetary space. These events can trigger severe magnetic storms when they collide with Earth. These storms can damage communications satellites and cause electrical power outages.

The STEREO mission will provide a totally new perspective on solar eruptions by capturing images of coronal mass ejections and background events from two observatories at the same time. STEREO’s twin observatories will be offset from one another in orbit. One observatory will be placed “ahead” of the Earth in its orbit, and using a series of lunar swingbys, the other will travel “behind.” Just as the slight offset between your eyes provides you with depth perception, this placement will allow the STEREO observatories to obtain 3-D images of the sun.

Using this unique 3-D imagery, scientists will be able to examine the structure of these important events, and learn more about their fundamental nature and origin.

Image and source: NASA

The Russian Space program was once home to a shuttle program. The Shuttle Buran program was initiated in 1976 supposedly in response the United States Shuttle program.

Russia at one time had two completed space shuttles: the Buran and the Pitchka. There were three others but all were either unfinished or dismantled. The Pitchka never flew.

The main shuttle was the Buran (translates to either snowstorm or blizzard or something close to that) and was the only one to actually fly. The unmanned shuttle Buran 1.01 launched into orbit on November 15, 1988 by a specially designed Energia booster rocket.

After two orbits of 103 minutes the shuttle made an automated landing at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The landing went very well, despite a cross wind of 37 mph the shuttle was just 5 feet off the centerline.

Conspiracy theorists rejoice! There was much speculation the Buran flight never took place because it was not televised. Further speculation has it, the landing wasn’t from space at all but from atop the plane that transported it. Here’s the launch video…have at it

The Antonov An-225 was built to carry the Buran, it is the worlds largest aircraft. The behemoth is pretty much a wonder in its own right.

The shuttle program was cancelled in 1993 due to funding issues during the political turmoil that was the order of the day in the then Soviet Union.

Image courtesy Wikipedia

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

It’s back. I found out about this while goofing around over at Spaceweather.com. This is going to be really something! Imagine Mars looking as large as the full moon!

Unless you are on a spaceship and are something like a million miles from the Mars, well, it just isn’t going to happen; as spaceweather.com points out Mars will be on the other side of the Sun on the big day. If you get the emails perpetuating the hoax, just delete them.

Do go to snopes.com to read what the email says. I have yet to get emails informing me of the stupendous event, but I will.

What you should (or could) do though is go out and check out the meteor shower tomorrow morning – about 3 am would be best. The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower will peak on July 28th. Look to the south the shower will appear to radiate from Aquarius, Spaceweather has a sky map you can compare to the sky if you don’t know your way around.

Spirit is a very busy little rover, it should now be putting together and testing 200 pieces of new flight software which has been transmitted to it over the past several weeks.

The little rover is healthy and is heading into the dead of winter on Mars, the winter solstice will occur on August 8.

The image shows Spirits view of the reddish-brown surface, you are looking at the rock abrasion tool.

Opportunity is also healthy and is driving towards Beagle Crater and has about 164 feet to go.

The image here is the tracks of “Jammerbugt”, a spot where Opportunity was mired down for a while.

Images from Opportunity, well both rovers actually, are pretty much limited to those needed to help plan the operations of the next sol. That will be improving after a while.

Images courtesy: NASA / JPL – Caltech/Cornell