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Maksim Surayev/Roskosmos

We’ve mentioned cosmonaut Maksim Surayev’s blog before, but it really is worth checking out—some of the most entertaining dispatches ever written from orbit.

Even his photos have personality, like this one, of his watch floating in front of the space station’s window.

Here’s the link.

Having settled into a new, lower orbit just 31 miles above the lunar surface, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently passed over the Apollo 17 site.

Harrison "Jack" Schmitt on the moon, December 1972, with Earth in the background.

We emailed moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, the Apollo 17 lunar module pilot and the only geologist—the only scientist—to have walked on the moon, and asked him if he’d seen the new photos of his old stomping grounds. He had. Anything strike him as different from the way it looked in December 1972?

“The most surprising geological aspect of the image is the very dark area that begins about 100 meters north of the SEP [the Surface Electrical Properties transmitter] site,” he replied. “This is probably a concentration of black pyroclastic beads (also seen at Shorty Crater) in the regolith. If we had been able to see it before the Apollo 17 mission, we probably would have picked a station there for a stop on the way to Station 6 (the large boulder site at the base of the North Massif).”

When asked if there’s anything he’d like to see in more detail on future LRO passes, Schmitt had a ready answer. “I suspect that they plan eventually to image the entire area; but a comparable image of Shorty Crater where we found the orange pyroclasitc glass [here's a description of the site and here's a lab photo of the glass beads and an accompanying description] and of the boulder tracks on the walls of the valley would be of great interest. This resolution and sun angle may make it possible to map the distribution of pyroclastic glass throughout the area and region.”

What else did he think was noteworthy? “The very dark rectangle a the LRV [Lunar Roving Vehicle] final parking spot is puzzling,” he said. “Something drastically changed the albedo of the upper surface of the LRV, probably the result of changes to the materials of the seats or because of deposits from broken silver-zinc batteries. Similary, the area immediately arouund the Challenger descent  stage appears darkened, also probably because of contamination from the materials or fluids in the stage.

“Our EVA 1-3 LRV tracks away from the landing area are not obvious,” he continued, “but I suspect other versions of the image will show them. That will be more difficult because the landing area had been lightened by the winnowing of fine material from the top of the regolith giving a very thin albedo enhancement. Tracks in this area look dark because of stirring up the normal dark regolith from below this enhancement.

“Just seeing this overhead, high sun angle detail of the Apollo 17 landing site in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow strikes my interest!” Schmitt wrote. “The pre-Apollo 17 photography we had for planning was at lower sun angles and at least ten times lower resolution. Having a record of our activities in the vicinity of the Challenger [lunar module] stirs great memories. My appreciation and awe goes to Mark Robinson and his LRO team.”

The scrub of today’s Ares I-X launch, now scheduled for 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, October 28, is a good reminder of all that can go wrong when launching a new rocket. But the problems that led to today’s scrub didn’t involve any of the vehicle’s technologies, unless you include a lanyard trying to pull off a stuck probe cover on the tip of the vehicle. The bungee-type cord had to be unceremoniously stretched, probably by people with advanced engineering degrees, for a few minutes until it snapped away. The applause in the room, audible on NASA TV, left a colleague and me amused.

Mainly, today’s culprit was the threat of bad weather, including upper level winds at the altitude where the vehicle would encounter maximum dynamic pressure; and an atmospheric condition that causes static electricity to build up on the outside of the vehicle as it flies, which would block the ground controllers’ ability to destroy the I-X if it flew off course. These passed, and when everything looked great and the clock was ticking again, with just a few minutes to go, the Homer Simpson of cargo ships strayed into the restricted waters east of the launch site, triggering a hold until bad weather could return…

Ares I-X, still on the launch pad.

Part of me—no, all of me—fully expected a scrub, having grown up in an era when only two of every five shuttle flights launched on the first attempt, and almost one in ten required more than four attempts. The two humdingers that share the record: STS-61C in 1986, and STS-73 in 1995. Each left on the seventh try. Last July, STS-127 made a run at tying them, but Endeavour got off on the sixth effort.

Granted, shuttle launches are forced to rely on good weather at emergency landing spots around the globe. And some shuttles that, for example, chase down the International Space Station have a launch window of just a few minutes.

But scrubs ain’t cheap. NASA admits that each time they fuel and drain a shuttle, $500,000 goes up in hydrogen and oxygen vapors, and $700,000 in personnel costs.

It’s worth mentioning that between November 1967 and May 1973, NASA launched 13 Saturn V rockets (including Skylab), 10 of them manned, and not a single launch was ever scrubbed. Apollo 14 saw a brief delay due to weather, and Apollo 17 saw one due to a computer glitch. But no astronaut ever unbuckled from a Saturn V on launch day and took the elevator down.

Was that just the “go fever” of the Apollo era? After Apollo 11 had met JFK’s deadline, NASA still launched Apollo 12 into a driving rain. When the rocket was struck by lighting half a minute later, the crew rebooted their pinwheeling control panels and flew on.

But the stakes are sky-high for NASA and Ares right now. The thought of a catastrophe on the first Ares flight is awful. They did the right thing today.

Surayev (top) and Romanenko. (Roskosmos/Maksim Surayev)

When did cosmonauts get so hip?

The current Russian residents of the International Space Station, Maksim Surayev and Roman Romanenko, are two of the loosest, laughing-est spacemen we’ve seen in a long time. Maybe it’s because they just spent ten days in orbit with a clown.

Whatever the reason, Surayev, 37, and Romanenko, 38 (who’s a second-generation cosmonaut—his father Yuri flew on Soyuz 26 in 1977) seem to be having a great time on their rookie spaceflight.

Surayev started with the schtick even before he got to orbit, periodically breaking into song on launch day (the 70s pop song “Mammy Blue,” for some reason). Taking a cue from the NASA astronauts who now Twitter and blog on every shuttle flight, Surayev is writing a blog on the Russia Today site, a first for a cosmonaut (although his boss Sergei Krikalev has a Facebook page).

Romanenko, who’s been playing bass guitar since he was young, spent half of his recent phone chat with two members of u2, Bono and The Edge (plus Bono’s sons Eli and John), lobbying to appear with the band when they play Moscow. Judge for yourself (below) whether he talked his way onstage. I think yes.

How do you say “Rock On!” in Russian?

(Video: NASA)

On the day of the LCROSS lunar impact, a NASA ground camera normally used to track space shuttle launches caught this video of the International Space Station passing over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Here’s how to see the station for yourself, from your own backyard. (Video: NASA)