Summary: 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!
