APOLLO LANDING SITES PHOTOGRAPHED: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned its first imagery of Apollo landing sites. The pictures show lunar module descent stages, scientific instruments and even 40-year-old foot trails made by astronauts walking across the dusty lunar surface: full story. BIG SPACESHIP: Yesterday, space shuttle Endeavour docked to the International Space Station. A few hours later, the complex flew over the Netherlands where Ralf Vandebergh was waiting with his 10-inch telescope and--snap!--he took this picture: Today, astronauts are unloading a porch from the shuttle's cargo bay and installing it on Japan's Kibo science laboratory. What do you do with a "space porch"? It's a research tool. When experiments require exposure to space radiation or hard vacuum, astronauts can set it out on the porch. The porch will also add an increment of sun-reflecting surface area to the space station's profile, making the complex brighter than ever. Check the Simple Satellite Tracker for flybys. more images: from Pawel Warchal of Cracow, Poland; from Marco Langbroek of Leiden, the Netherlands; from Simon Loy of Vancouver, BC, Canada; MAN-MADE NLCs: On July 15th, Nature provided a grand display of noctilucent clouds stretching from Scandinavia to Colorado. At the same time, NASA provided a miniature display of its own over Florida: "We saw some brilliant night-shining clouds here in Florida," reports Martin Zloty of Land O'Lakes, just north of Tampa. "They appeared about three hours after space shuttle Endeavour launched on its mission to the International Space Station." Indeed, Endeavour was the source of the clouds. The space shuttle's hydrogen-burning main engines spew tons of water vapor into the atmosphere during their ascent to space. When the shuttle reaches an altitude of 60 to 70 km, the water vapor turns into super-tiny ice crystals that glow electric blue when illuminated by the setting sun. It looks much like a noctilucent cloud and in a sense it is, created by man rather than Nature. A movie from researchers at Hampton University shows the process in action. more images: from Fendell Pillsbury of Sarasota, Florida 2009 Noctilucent Photo Gallery [previous years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003] Explore the Sunspot Cycle |