DSCOVR Will Launch - Falcon 9 Plans Landing

Update - February 11, 12:15 pm:

Today's DSCOVR launch attempt is still on track for 3:03 pm PST. NASA and SpaceX will have live feeds.

Unfortunately, SpaceX will not attempt to land the Falcon 9 upper stage on a barge today due to extreme weather in the Atlantic. SpaceX reports 3-story-high waves crashing over decks and says the company plans a soft water landing through the storm to collect valuable landing data.

Please scroll down for more information about the DSCOVR mission and landing attempt.

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Update - February 10, 3:00 pm:

Launch was scrubbed today due to persistent upper level winds just above the safe margin. Next attempt will be tomorrow:

Wednesday, February 11, 3:03 pm PST (6:03 pm EST, 00:03 Feb.12 CET).

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Update - February 9, 8:00 am:

NOAA tweeted this morning that launch will be delayed one more day due to unfavorable weather conditions. New launch time: 

Tuesday, February 10, 3:05 pm PST (6:05 pm EST, 00:05 Feb.10 CET).

A backup launch window is available on Wednesday, February 11, 3:03 pm PST (6:03 pm EST, 00:03 Feb.12 CET).


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Update - February 8, 3:20 pm: 

Today's launch was scrubbed three minutes prior to lift-off time. According to spaceflightnow.com: "The Air Force Eastern Range called a hold due to a loss of tracking with the rocket. The SpaceX launch team was also working a telemetry problem in the final minutes of the countdown, and it's not clear if both conditions were "no go" for launch."

The launch window was instantaneous and there won't be another attempt today. Falcon 9 is being put in safe mode. SpaceX will try again tomorrow:

Monday, February 9, 3:05 pm PST (6:05 pm EST, 00:05 Feb.10 CET). 
Weather conditions are about 50% favorable. A backup launch window is available on Wednesday. The 1-day delay will also give SpaceX a chance to replace a video transmitter on the rocket's first stage.

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Tomorrow, February 8, Space X will launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) for NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force. This launch has been delayed a few times throughout January and is now scheduled for 3:10 pm PST (6:10 pm EST, 00:10 Feb. 9 CET). In North America, we'll see a Sunday afternoon launch from Cape Canaveral. NASA TV and SpaceX will have live coverage.

 NASA / NOAA / USAF DSCOVR Mission Patch

Nine minutes after launch - and this time in daylight - the Falcon 9's first stage will prepare to land on SpaceX’s autonomous spaceport drone ship in the Atlantic. The private rocket company tried this maneuver for the first time last month - an almost-nailed-it landing attempt that ended, as Elon Musk tweeted, with a full RUD event - rapid unscheduled disassembly. Sunday's landing attempt on a drone ship, if successful, will mark a historic occasion in the history of rocketry. You can find more details about the launch and landing timeline here.

  SpaceX DSCOVR Mission Patch

The DSCOVR satellite will be positioned 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth, and about 90 million (145 million km) from the Sun at the L1 libration point, where the gravitational influence of the Sun and the Earth are exactly balanced. This places DSCOVR into a stable orbit, where the satellite will monitor space weather, such as solar winds that can affect communication grids and other equipment on Earth. DSCOVR is also tasked with Earth observing functions. Read more about DSCOVR here.

 Photo credit: NASA

Getting ready for launch: Enclosing DSCOVR in the Falcon 9's 43-foot-tall (13 m) payload fairing.

When Astronauts tweet: @astro_andre's video #fromspace

After my last blog entry last night, I was delighted this morning to see ESA astronaut @astro_andre tweet this time lapse video of Western Europe at night from the International Space Station. Can you identify the major population centers? Gotta be quick - we're traveling at 5 miles per second! Probably a lot faster, since it's a time lapse.

 


@astro_andre is André Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut currently on orbit. For more about André Kuiper's life on the ISS, follow his blog here (in English)

When Astronauts tweet: @astro_ron's Pictures #fromspace or Why Geography is Fun

Astronaut Ron Garan @astro_ron is one of my favorite tweeters - That means he ranks way up there in the Top 5 tweeters I like to read when I look at my phone in the morning. 

Last year, Ron spent a few months on the International Space Station. In the process, he took hundreds of photographs #fromspace (a twitter search for this hashtag and #fragileoasis will amaze you). He often published his pics on twitter, asking "Where on Earth is this?", leaving his followers to test their geography skills. If you think you know your geography, I invite you to test your geographic mettle by perusing Ron's photos #fromspace. No more neat lines and labeled countries. No more predictable North is up - West is left orientation. Just snapshots of our Planet, rotating in its Inimitable Splendor.

With most of Ron's photos, I really wasn't sure what part of Earth I was looking at. I considered myself lucky if I could identify a coastline or mountain range. I aced geography in school. As an avid follower of @astro_ron, I correctly identified immediately just one geographic feature - a day time picture of Lake Victoria. I looked for that picture for this article, but no luck. If anyone has the URL to the Lake Victoria pic, please send it along.

Here is another one of Ron's pictures that I recognized immediately:

Here is another night time picture of several metropolitan cities that a lot of people on this Earth will swear up and down they can pick out on a Map. They'll look at this Actual Photograph and won't be able to locate those cities without a good amount of doubt and guesswork.

What fun!

How to build a Saturn V in your own backyard

Funny things can happen on Twitter. Or, more precisely, because of the connections we create there. 

I enjoy following Martin Stojanovski @martincco in Slovakia. He is an interesting and enthusiastic European spacetweep who posts in several languages. I like to puzzle out his Russian language posts. He is also a lot of fun - I have photo proof. 

At the end of last month, Martin tweeted about the local winter weather and the possibility of building a snowman the next day. That inspired me to reply "Forget snowmen. Build a snow rocket!" I suggested the Saturn V for starters, and invited Twitter luminary @DrVonBraun to provide assistance with technical and engineering issues. 

Here is the result - I was delighted to see it. I think building snow rockets should be a required space geek activity for those who live in climates with snowfall. 

 

~ Imagine Mars ~

One of the purposes of this blog is to showcase noteworthy news, achievements and aspirations of people other than trained astronauts in the areas of space flight, space tourism and space exploration.

Pamela Greyer is a teacher in Chicago. I first met Pam in June 2011; before that, I knew her on twitter as @TheNasaLady. We met at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where I attended my first NASA tweetup. I will describe that life-changing event in a future post. This one is dedicated to Pamela and her students’ remarkable achievements.

The previous summer, Pam had worked with some of her teenage students on the “Imagine Mars” project. Students were challenged to think about and imagine the requirements and realities of establishing a Mars colony and maintaining a human presence on Mars. Pamela’s students worked on all the aspects of a Mars colony, from the basics of survival, sustainability, habitats, oxygen, food / water supply and waste disposal to a deeper understanding of conservation of resources, recycling and green technology. At the end of the project, something amazing happened: Students took the initiative; they wrote and performed a rap song entitled "Bye, Bye Earth" about Mars colonization and made this video:

About half way through the NASA JPL tweetup last June, tweetup organizers played this video for the attendees. The reaction was a joy to behold: Spontaneous cheering and applause that culminated in a standing ovation.

For anyone who has any doubts that we WILL go to Mars and establish colonies there, watch this video and you will reconsider.

For those of us who have no doubt, the questions isn’t if we will go, but when.