Spacevidcast HD

This video includes clips starting at L-28 minutes showing the computer problems, additional T-5 hold added to the count, Go/No-Go statuses and ascent information for OV-103 or Space Shuttle Discovery. Launch was on Feb 24th, 2011 and this is the last time Space Shuttle Discovery will ever fly.

CAPE CANAVERAL – Space shuttle Discovery was wheeled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on one of the massive crawler-transporters toward launch complex 39A – and its final mission – STS-133. This marks the second trip out to the launch pad for Discovery; the orbiter had to be taken back to the VAB for scans and repairs. Discovery was first wheeled out to LC 39A on Sept. 20, 2010. The Nov. 5 launch attempt was aborted due to a leaky Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP). When engineers were checking out this problem, they discovered another, a section of popped up foam on the shuttle’s external tank. Foam has been a concern ever since a briefcase-sized piece of foam led to the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. Further inspection showed that the cracks extended all the way down to the aluminum skin of the external tank. As engineers looked further more and more of these cracks were discovered around what is known as the “intertank” region. Engineers did what repairs that they could out at the launch pad. Then the large, orange tank was filled with the super-cooled fuel that powers the shuttle into orbit. When tanking occurs, the tank can shrink by as much as half-an-inch. With the realization that this shrinkage could severely impact the cracks, 89 sensors were placed around this area to monitor the effect of fueling the external tank. To properly check any potential impact the tanking had, scans would need to be conducted and that meant a trip back to the VAB. So Discovery was rolled back to the VAB for X-Rays and other scans. Once the area was given a thorough inspection, more cracks were found and further repairs were required. But during this time NASA had discovered what was causing these small cracks to occur and Discovery was set to head back out to the launch pad for her date with history. “We fully expect that this will be the last time that Discovery will make this trip horizontally,” said Allard Beutel, NASA’s news chief at Kennedy Space Center. “The next time she travels – it will be vertically – to the International Space Station.” Discovery began its slow, methodical trek out to the launch pad at 8 p.m. EDT. The trip lasted some six hours, as the pondering crawler-transporter that hauls the spacecraft out to the launch pad moves at a blistering one mile an hour. Discovery’s final mission is a resupply flight to the International Space Station. The orbiter will ferry a modified cargo carrier, the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module along with much-needed supplies and the first human-like robot to fly into space – Robonaut-2. The crew consists of commander Steve Lindsey, Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Michael Barratt, Alvin Drew, Nicole Stott and Steve Bowen. Bowen is a last-minute replacement for Tim Kopra, who broke his hip in a bicycle accident earlier this month.

Dr. Ryan L. Kobrick, Executive Director of Yuri's Night joins us live to announce the new video contest and your chance to win $500! Everyone seems to be stepping up their space program from ESA to Roscosmos and even Private Space! Kepler is finding planets like crazy. Finally, the Space Shuttle may not retire in 2011 after all. For full show links and details, visit our wiki: http://wiki.spacevidcast.com/en/4.02 flowplayer("player", "/flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.7.swf");

Show links available on our Wiki. STS-135 is an official yet unfunded mission, the most complex EDL ever, China test unmanned craft, Nanosail comes back to life and more news. flowplayer("player", "/flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.7.swf");

A rocket goes bada boom, a sunset on Mars, Zombie sat ate enough brains to come back to life, continued Ares development and a look forward to what we're thinking of doing in Spacevidcast 400.

We take a look at all that happened in the space industry in 2010. It was a lot more than we remembered and it was awesome!

This SpacePod was researched and written by Jeffrey Alles Space weather in the palm of your hand, a new use for forty year old Russian rocket engines, and our moon is AWESOME! I'm Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your Spacevidcast SpacePod for December 22nd, 2010. Orbital Sciences Corporation on Sunday executed a successful test of their AJ26 rocket engine at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The kerosene based engine is the first stage of the Taurus II rocket in development by Orbital to launch the Cygnus robotic resupply spacecraft to the International Space Station. The test lasted 55 seconds while the AJ26 engine was pushed to 108% of it's baseline thrust. Sunday was the first time the thrust vector control system was tested, a system vital for spacecraft steering during the four minute first stage burn. According to Orbital Sciences, all primary objectives were met successfully. Two AJ26 engines, which are modified Russian NK-33 engines originally designed for the Soviet Union's N1 moon rocket, will be used on each Taurus II. How do you make an NK-33 into an AJ26? Aerojet, the company behind the AJ26, test fires an NK-33 in Russia and if cleared for use, removes some of the original equipment, replaces the electronics and gimbal system, and clears the engine to use kerosene. Orbital will be test firing an AJ26 again in mid-January to check engine control valve tuning. The maiden voyage of Taurus II is scheduled to take place in the second half of 2011, from Wallops Island, Virginia. Yesterday we talked about a great app for iPhone users called MissionClock. But what about a space geek app for the millions of Android users out there, like me? A company in Colorado has released an app for Android phones that allows users to see near real time images from the sun through the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The application was commissioned by NASA and developed by Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates, or ASTRA. According to the head of ASTRA, not only are scientists using it but amateurs and novices with an interest in space weather can also download and use the app. No stranger to space weather software, ASTRA also develops an Android application, aptly called SpaceWeather, that accesses ASTRA's network, and models space weather conditions, right in the palm of your hand. Look for both applications in the Android Marketplace. Yesterday we covered the use of LRO's LOLA instrument to create maps of the moon with unprecedented accuracy. Well, another map release was made; this time by the European Space Agency or ESA. GlobCover 2009 is an improvement upon the same effort from five years ago, called GlobCover 2005. Using a years worth of data from the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on ESA's Envisat satellite, ESA and Université catholique de Louvain created the sharpest global land cover map ever created. The data was captured between Janurary 1st and December 31st 2009. These maps, which are freely available from ESA's website, can be used in any number of applications ranging from environmental studies to managing natural resources. And speaking of the moon, I can't think of a better way to end this SpacePod than with the Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse. If you missed this one, your next viewing opportunity for a Lunar Eclipse that happens on Winter Solstice will be December 21st, 2094. Enjoy.

3 new crew members reach the ISS and a really interesting way to look at our own moon. I’m Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your Spacevidcast SpacePod for December 21st, 2010. On Wednesday, December 15th 2010 a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off carrying the next 3 crew members bound for the International Space Station. Then on Friday the 17th the capsule docked with the space station at 20:11 UT. A couple of hours later The expanded Expedition 26/27 crew opened the hatch and ingressed to the station. The three person crew of Soyuz TMA-20, Dmitri Kon-drat-yev, Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli represent the partner organizations of Roscosmos, NASA and the European Space Agency in the ISS program. While the US and Russia added more people to the Space Station, China launched a rocket to add more satellites to their upcoming GPS constellation this last Friday. A new satellite navigation and positioning network or Compass System was launched aboard a Long March 3A rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 20:20 UT. This is the 2nd of what will be 35 satellites providing both civilian and military GPS data to China. Being that we just saw a lunar eclipse, how about a new way to look at the moon? NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO is orbiting the moon creating the most precise and complete map to date of the moons complex surface. Originally launched to help scout out landing sites for the nearly defunct Constellation program, LRO remains in Lunar Orbit gathering data. Using an instrument called the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter or LOLA the spacecraft sends a single laser pulse down to the lunar surface through an optical element that splits the pulse in to 5 beams. These 5 beams then strike the surface of the moon and depending on how long it takes for each to return, LOLA is able to map out what the surface terrain looks like. The end result are some psychedelic pictures of our moon. By artificially adding color in we can get a good idea as to what the surface of the moon looks like. The red areas indicate high elevation whereas the blue areas are the lowest. You can get more pictures and videos at NASA’s LRO web site. Ever wish you could get rocket and shuttle launch notifications sent to your iPhone? Maybe countdown to the next launch on your iPod Touch? Well now you can! MissionClock is a $5.00 application available now in the iTunes Apple store for iOS devices. This awesome space geek app allows you to see what upcoming missions are launching, when they will launch and even get mission details. It is a great showpiece to help get your friends excited about space flight and for the next 24 hours Spacevidcast is giving away 10 copies to 10 lucky winners! It’s easy to enter! Simply send out a tweet with a link to this video and the hash tag #spacevidcast and you’ll be automatically entered! The contest starts December 21st, 2010 at midnight UT and ends at 23:59 UT the same day. You have nearly 24 hours to enter to win! And if you think this is a cool prize, you should see what we’re giving away during our live show this Friday at 0200 UT. It’s going to be awesome and I know we’ll see you there!

On November 5th, 2010 NASA scrubbed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery due to a Hydrogen leak. At first it looked like this was just another GUCP issue which vents the Hydrogen boiloff away from the vehicle. However as engineers inspected the tank a bit further large cracks in the insulation foam were detected which later led to the finding of cracks in metal stringers. As more cracks were found, NASA decided to delay the launch until 2011 to allow additional time for testing. At noon UTC this last Friday NASA began that testing with a full on fueling of Space Shuttle Discovery’s orange external tank. Half a million pounds of super cooled liquid hydrogen and oxygen were loaded in to the tank while engineers collected data from sensors. At 19:25 UTC the tanking test completed after NASA had fully pressurized and simulated pre-launch conditions. The initial verdict is that no issues were found. The GUCP was not leaking and from what they could tell no additional stress on the external tank was exhibited. NASA needs some time to evaluate the data further, but thus far it is looking good for an early February launch. While the tanking tests are completed, NASA is not done analyzing the vehicle yet. After filling the external tank with all that fuel they then emptied in in preparations to roll the entire shuttle stack back to the vehicle assembly building this Tuesday. Once there engineers will take X-Rays of the external tank to ensure there are no additional surprises in store, that have yet to be detected. If all goes well we will be looking at a new launch target date of No Earlier Than February 3rd, 2010. Tonight through tomorrow morning will be quite a rare event. For those of you in North America you’ll have a great opportunity to see a lunar eclipse on the same day as Winter solstice! In the last 2000 years a lunar eclipse has only happened once on winter solstice! A lunar eclipse happens when the earth passes between the sun and the moon, causing our planet to cast a shadow over the moon and blocking out its light. The best viewing area will be in North America and will start tonight with the best viewing times for most areas happening before dawn on the 21st of December. Also happening tonight, Cassini will make a 48 kilometer pass over the north pole of everyone’s favorite Saturn Moon: Enceledus. The Fields and Particles instrument will try and sniff out anything coming from the moon. That’s a whole lot going on during the shortest day of the year! As we get closer and closer to the holidays, we’re feeling more and more giving here at Spacevidcast. Over the past few weeks we have already given out 3 Roku HD players and we have another one to give away on December 24th at 0200 UTC during our live show. Since it is Christmas eve it sure would be cool if we gave out other great prizes as well such as Mission Clock and Spacevidcast warez. The only way to win is to watch live. For those of you in the US that show will be this Thursday at 6:00pm PST or 9:00pm EST. We’ll see you there!

Show Notes: New bill to protect NewSpace companies Nexus S in Near Space New Master Plan for KSC Visitor Complex; includes new space shuttle orbiter home design iPods in to Space? Virgin Galactic to go to LEO? Shuttle Fueling Tests on Friday Launch costs going up, not down

Fret not Space Shuttle fans... If Orbital Sciences gets their way, a new mini space shuttle may be coming your way! I'm Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your SpacePod for December 15th, 2010 Yesterday we talked a bit about Orbital Sciences plan to submit a proposal to NASA under Commercial Crew Development 2. Today we have a bit more info and a picture! According to a press release by Orbital the company will be seeking funding from NASA for a “blended lifting body vehicle” which will launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket and return to Earth with a conventional runway landing. Looks a bit like a small version of the space shuttle. The idea is that this vehicle could carry 3 astronauts and 1 paying tourist to the International Space Station and could have test flights as early as 2014. If the Atlas 5 rocket doesn’t work, don’t fret, Orbital says that the vehicle would be flexible enough to launch atop other vehicles. Now imagine finding a lower cost launch vehicle such as something from SpaceX and the amount of money required to put humans in to low Earth orbit may plummet! Speaking of human space flight, Russia is gearing up to send 3 astronauts to the International Space Station, Cady Coleman, Paolo Nespoli and Dmitry Kondratyev. Lifting off from the Gagarin Launch Pad today at 19:09 UTC the Expedition 26/27 crew will dock with the space station this Friday at 20:12 UTC. Tune in to Spacevidcast to watch this launch live! If you have never seen a Russian launch before, they are a lot of fun. One translator for all crew members make for some very interesting comms chat! Oh, and unlike here in the US, Russia has a camera inside the Soyuz cockpit, so you can watch the crew bounce around and shake as they ascend to space. A bit further out in the cosmos we have the Voyager 1 Spacecraft which is nearing the edge of our solar system. Ponder that for a moment, humans have created a craft that is now at the very edge of our own solar system! That is nearly 11 BILLION miles away from our sun! So far in fact that the speed of the solar wind is basically zero. Fret not, Voyager 1 is still traveling at 10.5 miles per second and for the foreseeable future will remain the most distant object humans from Earth created by Humans. Someday soon Voyager 1 will reach a planet of artificial life forms where will will be transformed in to a large city. Over time the name will wear off of its nameplate and it will only know itself as VEGER to be later discovered by Captian Kirk of the starship Enterprise. If you have a Roku box make sure you install the Spacevidcast channel. In the Live section you can watch as the next Martian Rover, Curiosity, is built by NASA! It’s pretty cool to see engineers working on something that will be crawling on the surface of another planet in 2012. To get there just open up the Spacevidcast channel, click on Live Feeds then click on Curiosity Cam. Don’t have a Roku box! Here’s your chance to win. Tune in to Spacevidcast’s live show this Friday at 0200 UTC where we will be giving away a FREE Roku HD unit. The only way to win is to watch live. For those of you in the US that’s Thursday nights at 6:00pm PST or 9:00pm EST. We’ll see you there!

Two steps forward, one giant step backwards. I’m Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your SpacePod for December 14th, 2010. It’s now official. NASA will be rolling back Space Shuttle Discovery to the Vehicle Assembly Building. But before NASA does that, engineers will conduct taking tests at the pad no earlier than this Friday. During the tanking tests, half a million pounds of super cooled liquid hydrogen and oxygen will be loaded in to the iconic orange external tank. NASA will not only be filling the tanks, but also keeping the fuel there in a faux countdown designed to simulate launch day. Much like an actual shuttle countdown there will be a series of holds giving NASA crew time to check the tank, as well as full pressurization as the clock nears T-0. When the tanking is done engineers will roll Discovery back to the VAB for additional X-Ray inspections on the back of the external tank. If no additional problems are found then Discovery will re-roll back to the launch pad around January 14th for the next launch window of February 3rd through the 10th. Since its first flight in 1984, Space Shuttle Discovery has been rolled back to the VAB 5 times. The first being after a pad abort on STS-41D in 1984, then again after cracks were found on lug hinges for STS-39 in 1991. Again after woodpeckers drilled around 195 holes in the external tank foam for STS-70 in 1995. Once more for foam insulation problem in 1999 for STS-96 and again in 2005 for STS-114 in order to get a new external tank in preparation to return to flight. This will be the 6th time and potentially final time Discovery has had to roll back in what will be it’s 27 year history. Once Discovery is ready for launch there will be hundreds of cameras capturing ascent. Recently the 45 minute long video ‘Ascent’ has been made available on YouTube, created and narrated by NASA engineer Matt Melles and Kevin Burke. This is some of the most amazing space imagery and geekery you’re going to see for a long while! Here’s just a small sample, but you really should check out the entire 45 minute clip! On the lighter side, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has completed assembly of the oxidizer turbopump on the all new J-2X rocket engine. The turbopump is one of the most important and difficult parts to make in a rocket engine, so this is a great step forward for J-2X. This new rocket engine will be used in upper stage of NASA’s upcoming... Lets end this SpacePod on some New Space News, shall we? It sounds like Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic may be teaming up! Orbital is looking to put 4 humans in to orbit around the year 2015 or so, in a bid to win NASAs Commercial Crew Development 2 contract. Orbitals new spacecraft would launch atop the time tested Atlas 5 rocket carrying 3 astronauts and one paying space tourist to the International Space Station. So where does Virgin Galactic fit in all this? Virgin would market the commercial rides, conduct drop tests using their WhiteKnight 2 vehicle and offer transport services for the craft should there be an in-flight abort. Interesting bed fellows as Virgin is also expected to announce their intentions to go after the NASA contract later this week. No official word on that yet, but with all this competition it sounds like your chances of going to space keep getting better and better and better!

The end is in sight for the Space Shuttle while the future of SpaceX is looking bright. I'm Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your SpacePod for December 13th, 2010. The big news this last week was that Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX has become the first company in the world to have a spacecraft launch, orbit the Earth, re-enter our atmosphere and be safely recovered. Until now only 3 countries have been able to accomplish this: the US, Russia and China. Here's a quick review of the launch itself just in case you missed it And while watching a Falcon 9 lifoff from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, I think watching the Dragon module separate from the upper stage was even more exciting! This is just the beginning. The Dragon capsule still needs to have the photovoltaic cells, or solar panels added for energy generation and additional maneuvering/docking tests need to be completed before SpaceX will be able to start officially carrying out its cargo transportation contract with NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services or COTS contract. Just as SpaceX is starting to spin up production, NASA is winding down the Space Shuttle program. Last week the final 3 Space Shuttle Main Engines or SSMEs were installed in Atlantis for the Launch on Need Mission and potential final flight of the Space Shuttle Program: STS-135. Each engine is 14 feet long, weighs 6,700 pounds and is 7.5 feet in diameter at the end of the nozzle. Now that things have settled down a bit over here, it is our hope that we will resume our live show this Friday at 0200 UTC. We'll have our Roku HD giveaway where you can win a FREE Roku box allowing you to watch Spacevidcast live on your HDTV! The only way to win is to watch live. For those of you in the US that would be Thursday night at 6:00pm pacific standard time or 9:00pm eastern standard time. We'll see you there!

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft is doing some awesome stuff. Stay tuned to NASA’s twitter feed Space Cadets, today should be interesting. I’m Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your SpacePod for November 30th, 2010. Back on November 2nd, 2010 the Cassini spacecraft went in to safe mode when the on-board computer had a messed up bit. As a result the craft was unable to process an important instruction and that’s why it went in to safe mode. This is the 6th time since its launch in 1997 that the craft has gone in to safe mode. On November 24th, 2010 Cassini was brought back to full operations and just in time. At 11:54 UTC and during Spacecraft Event Time, Cassini will pass around 48 kilometers or 30 miles from the surface of Enceladus. During the closest part of the flyby, Cassini's will make gravity measurements to help understand the moon's interior structure better. Follow the action on the official Cassini Twitter page at twitter.com/cassinisaturn. Other great stuff has come out of this craft as well. The Cassini spacecraft has detected a very weak atmosphere known as an exosphere, infused with oxygen and carbon dioxide around Saturn's icy moon Rhea. This is the first time a spacecraft has directly captured molecules of an oxygen atmosphere – albeit a very thin one -- at a world other than Earth. This means that active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe and could mean life may be more common than we think. Not enough data yet, but certainly an interesting find. Lets close this out a bit closer to home. We have some amazing time lapse of Aurora Borealis recorded over Norway. What better way to see this amazing imagery than on your HDTV, and thanks to Roku now you can! Tune in this Friday at 0200 UTC during our live show for your chance to win a Roku HD player. For those of you in the US that’s Thursday night at 6:00pm PST or 9:00pm EST. You can only win if you watch live! And now lets end this space pod right.

Hello Space Cadets, it’s time to play space news catchup. I’m Benjamin Higginbotham and this is your SpacePod for November 29th, 2010. We took last week off for Thanksgiving, so now we need a moment to catch up. Here are some of the top Space News items. Space Shuttle Discovery is no longer targeting a December 3rd launch date. Actually, no real new target date has been set yet. [Video] The next launch window opens up on December 17th, but NASA will not launch until they are good and ready. Should we miss this window there is a Beta cutoff and logistics issues that may prevent the shuttle from launching until late February, 2011. Currently Space Shuttle Discovery sits in wait at Launch Pad 39A while engineers continue to analyze the vehicle for flight readiness. There has been a change of command aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 25 commander Douglass Wheelock or Astro_Wheels on twitter has handed off the reigns to Expedition 26 commander Scott Kelley on November 24th, 2010. [Video] The next day three Expedition 25 crew members, Doug Wheelock, Shannon Walker and Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin headed home aboard a Soyuz space craft and landed safely later that night. [Video] Masten Space Systems has signed an agreement with Space Florida to begin test launches from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Masten hopes to have a demonstration launch some time in 2011. For those who don’t remember, Masten Space Systems was the Level 2 Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge in late 2009. We thought something was up when Dave was hanging around Florida waay more than usual. Congrats to both Masten and the Space Coast. And finally on November 22nd next generation spaceship company SpaceX received the first ever FAA license to return a private spacecraft to Earth. This is a much needed step forward to allow their Dragon capsule to begin testing in space and return to Earth. The Falcon 9 Flight 2 demonstration flight will be very similar to the first Falcon 9 flight 1 but will also involve the Dragon spacecraft seperating from the second stage and will demonstrate operational communications, navigation, maneuvering and reentry. NASA tweeted out congratulations to SpaceX on getting their new and shiny FAA license. The Spacevidcast Live show RETURNS this Friday at 0200 UTC. Remember, we’re still giving away FREE Roku HD players so you can watch the final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on your HDTV with your friends all gathered around. A special thanks to Perforce Software for sponsoring the launch and allowing us to bring you not only HD coverage but also mobile and SD all at the same time! The only way to win is to watch live, and for those of you in the US that is Thursday night at 6:00pm Pacific Standard Time or 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time. We look forward to seeing you there!