http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet AirSpaceMag.com Blog Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:55:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_3665" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Maksim Surayev/Roskosmos"][/caption] 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. http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/20/time-flies/ [caption id="attachment_3649" align="aligncenter" width="491" caption="Sony Pictures"][/caption] A shame that Cessna doesn’t seem to recognize a potential PR gold mine. Remember when Mathias Rust landed a rented Cessna 172 near Red Square in 1987? Not a peep from Cessna headquarters. Now the company appears to have missed out again: In the mega-apocalyptic ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/18/spoiler-alert/ [caption id="attachment_3194" align="alignleft" width="339" caption="Concept courtesy of Lockheed Martin."][/caption] Size matters. (Well, at least in the surveillance world.) And three projects under way take dimensions to whole new lengths. The LEMV (it stands for Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle) is a mammoth hybrid airship championed by the U.S. Army as part of a ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/17/little-big/ [caption id="attachment_3636" align="alignleft" width="346" caption="Seiran on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (Carolyn Russo/NASM)"][/caption] Workers at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory announced on November 12 that through the use of submersibles, they had located at 2,600 feet two Japanese submarines that the U.S. military had scuttled off Oahu in 1946 ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/16/the-sub-of-all-fears/ [caption id="attachment_3629" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Photo: ESA/ OSIRIS Team"][/caption] Europe's Rosetta spacecraft took these spectacular views of a crescent Earth last week during its final close fly-by. The first frame starts at a distance of 683,000 miles. The last was taken from 198,000 miles. http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/14/as-the-world-turns/ [caption id="attachment_3614" align="alignright" width="334" caption="LightSail 1, the way we hope it will look next year. (Planetary Society)"][/caption] The history of solar sailing is basically the story of Charlie Brown and the football. It remains a great concept, a technology that could theoretically take us to the stars. But for all their ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/13/light-sails-and-laser-beams/ [caption id="attachment_3584" align="alignleft" width="529" caption="See? There was a plume (the fan-shaped smudge) after all. (Photo: NASA/ LCROSS Team)"][/caption] Congratulations and apologies are due. The LCROSS team, who endured much grumbling  from Internet viewers after last month's crash into the moon failed to produce a big visible plume, is reporting what they ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/13/water-on-the-moon-for-real/ [caption id="attachment_3548" align="alignleft" width="232" caption="ESA ©2009 MPS for OSIRIS Team"][/caption] You must need patience to work on Europe's Rosetta comet mission. Launched in 2004, the spacecraft won't arrive at its main destination, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, until 2014. That's longer than New Horizons is taking to get to Pluto. The reason is that ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/12/here-comes-rosetta-again/ According to a report in Flight International, India’s defense ministry is buying Russian-built MiG-29K fighters as "part of a 2004 order...that was incorporated into a deal for the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.” Wait—India has an aircraft carrier? That navy workhorse, the aircraft carrier, has been around for 100 years. (Ok, nearly. While ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/12/indias-reincarnated-aircraft-carrier/ Check out how good the camera technology has gotten for tracking a rocket booster all the way to 150,000 feet and back to the ocean. This high-definition video was taken during NASA's Ares 1-X launch on October 28, 2009, with a gyro-stabilized camera on board a Cessna Skymaster purring along ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/10/video-ares-1-x-all-the-way-to-splashdown/ 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. [caption id="attachment_3472" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Harrison "Jack" Schmitt on the moon, December 1972, with Earth in the background."][/caption] We emailed moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, the Apollo 17 lunar module ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/09/a-moonwalker-views-his-old-stomping-grounds/ [caption id="attachment_3457" align="alignright" width="347" caption=" Copyright the National World War II Museum."][/caption] Ready to experience World War II in "4-D"? Head over to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans for the opening of Tom Hanks' latest production, Beyond All Boundaries. The 35-minute film takes viewers from Pearl Harbor to ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/06/not-your-fathers-world-war-ii-movie/ Robot aircraft keep getting smaller and smarter. This one, built by a team at MIT, won the International Aerial Robotics Competition 5th mission challenge, which required that it enter a building, find its way around (through hallways and open windows), and send video back to home base. All autonomously, mind ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/05/video-indoor-helicopter/ They wouldn't be allowed to do it today, but back in 1959, experienced military pilots would sometimes buzz the Grand Canyon when flying out of nearby Nellis AFB. At the time, RAF pilot Ron Dick was an exchange officer with the US Air Force, training students in a Lockheed T-33. ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/04/a-joyride-through-the-grand-canyon/ [caption id="attachment_3319" align="alignleft" width="303" caption="Flickr photo by Airsafe."][/caption] Yes, our avian brothers committed feathered mayhem in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds, but is that any reason they should continue to be chucked into aircraft engines? Here’s the deal: All aircraft have to pass certification tests proving that the airplane can continue ... http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/11/03/strike-out/