by bintangkecil on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | News, World | No Comments

About 100 of NASA’s geekiest fans will be on hand, pecking away at iPhones, BlackBerrys, laptops and other Twittering gadgets, to tweet on Monday’s space shuttle Atlantis launch.

They plan to let loose with electronic messages — provided they aren’t so swept away by the afternoon liftoff that they fall uncharacteristically silent for a moment or two.

“I’ll be uploading stuff as it happens,” promised Steve Wake, 38, a computer programmer who flew in from Denver. “On launch day, who knows? I may be too excited about everything else to even think about doing that stuff. When it’s over with, I’m sure I will.”

Laura Burns already has a strategy. She figures she’ll have the words typed in and her finger hovering over the button so she can send a tweet at the moment of liftoff.

“I’ll have to be like juggling my iPhone and my camera and my eyes, and trying to get everything all at once,” said Burns, 33, a software systems engineer from Columbia, Md. She’s using the Twitter name “moonrangerlaura” to chronicle her entire trip — including the drive to Cape Canaveral and a pit stop for MoonPies.

For the first time ever, NASA last month invited its Twitter followers to sign up online for the chance to see a space shuttle launch up close.

The 100 slots — and 50 backup positions — filled in less than 20 minutes Oct. 16.

The two-day gathering got under way Sunday at Kennedy Space Center with talks by NASA bigwigs, including the first Twittering astronaut, Michael Massimino, aka Astro_Mike. The discussions were streamed live on the Internet, and the “tweetup” gathering was near the top of Twitter’s trending topics Sunday morning.

Nearly half the attendees are from Florida, making for an easier trip, especially if the mission ends up being delayed. Atlantis’ six astronauts have thousands of pounds of spare parts to deliver to the International Space Station. The 11-day flight will keep the astronauts in orbit over Thanksgiving.

Monday’s launch time is 2:28 p.m. Excellent weather is forecast.

The tweeps, as they’re called, represent 21 states plus the District of Columbia, as well as five countries, including Morocco and New Zealand. They’re traveling on their own dime.

NASA estimates the 100 have more than 150,000 Twitter followers. It’s a dream outreach program for a space agency looking to drum up support.

With only six shuttle flights remaining and still no word from the White House on a future course for astronauts, NASA is tapping into social media — Twitter, Facebook and the like — to spread its stay-in-space message.

Astronauts have been tweeting from Earth and orbit since spring. While NASA already has held a few of the tweetups — so-called meet ups of people who use Twitter — it’s the first for Kennedy Space Center, a high-security area requiring government clearance.

Even the most staid NASA types see the benefit of reaching out to a younger, hipper crowd.

Atlantis commander Charles Hobaugh — who acknowledged last month he doesn’t even text message — assigned the crew’s Twittering tasks to Dr. Robert Satcher Jr. Satcher, who will become the first orthopedic surgeon in space, uses the handle ZeroG_MD.

“It’s exciting that this is generating more interest in space exploration and certainly interest in the last few missions of the shuttle, which we hope are not the last few missions of the shuttle,” Satcher said.

With five children of his own, the director of NASA’s space shuttle program appreciates the importance of reaching out to the next generation.

“It’s the right thing to do, is to use the tools available and get them excited about things that are real, not virtual,” program director John Shannon said.

Neal Wiser, a 41-year-old Internet marketing strategist from Philadelphia, is fulfilling a lifelong dream. The biggest thing he’s ever seen lift off is an 8-foot model rocket.

This is Wiser’s third NASA tweetup. He’ll be blogging and Twittering throughout.

“We’re all geeks together,” he said. “I actually joked to my wife that I’m turning into a NASA groupie.”

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by nate on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 | Knowledge, Life, Travel, World | No Comments

Facts about Apollo 11 mission

The Apollo 11 mission statement: ‘Perform a manned lunar landing and return.’

Apollo 11 launched July 16 from Kennedy Space Center and returned to the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.

A three-stage, 33-story Saturn V rocket put Apollo 11 into Earth’s orbit in 12 minutes.

The command module was named Columbia, the landing craft Eagle.

The computing power of the spacecraft was less than that of the average cell phone today.

The lunar lander ladder had nine steps. The bottom step was 3.5 feet above the moon’s surface.

The Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon for 2 hours and 31 minutes.

President Richard Nixon called the astronauts from an Oval Office telephone during the moonwalk.

The  were on the moon for 21 hours and 38 minutes.

The suits worn by the astronauts weighed 360 pounds on Earth, 60 pounds on the moon.

Apollo 11 left the first litter on the moon, a bag of empty food packages and some urine bags.

The base of the Eagle remains on the moon with a plaque that says: ‘Here men from the Planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.’

Four men walked on the moon before the end of the 1960s.

The Apollo program cost about $25 billion between 1962 and 1972 (about $147 billion today).

At its peak, the Apollo program employed roughly 400,000 people and was supported by about 20,000 companies and universities.

All the moon visits occurred between December 1968 and December 1972.

Tags: Apollo, astronauts, kennedy space center, moon, moonwalk, NASA, Nixon

by bintangkecil on Monday, May 11th, 2009 | News | No Comments

By John Raoux, AP

Atlantis lifted off at 2:01 p.m. EDT on a mission to upgrade the world’s most famous telescope.

After a smooth countdown and picture-perfect liftoff, space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of seven astronauts are in space, ready to begin their 11-day mission to service NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis lifted off Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:01 p.m. EDT.

Atlantis and the STS-125 crew lifted off on a mission to upgrade the world’s most famous telescope.
(NASA.gov)

The six men and one woman will attempt the complicated tasks on a mission that was delayed last fall, two weeks before the scheduled launch, after the orbiting telescope broke down.

Two spacewalking teams will replace Hubble’s batteries and gyroscopes, install two new cameras and try to repair two broken science instruments not designed to be tinkered with in space.

Follow the countdown minute-by-minute as Atlantis is prepared and the astronauts suit up and ride to the pad. Updated first-hand from the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA.gov)

NASA is currently livestreaming the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Watch LIVE: Atlantis Launch Coverage here!

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