Up, up, and away -- ping, ping, thunk, thud -- and I thought rush hour traffic was bad.

Recently we had an airline plane downed by bird strikes to both engines and a successful landing in the Hudson River.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/15/new.york.plane.crash/

For a rocket launching a satellite to space, things in your flight path can make for a bad day as well.
We think about going to the Moon with astronauts again and setting up shop on the Moon.
When that happens the number of launches to space will increase and the concern for where the latest space debris is will be on their minds.

Gunjan reports that India is still on track to put humans in orbit with their first manned spaceship around 2015.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090211-india-manned-spaceship.html

China has orbited their astronauts with their third space mission in September 2008.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4333158.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE48O9VL20080926

Pings on a satellite can be expensive and be a cause for more space debris.
Pings on a spaceship with humans aboard is even more concern.

We have had a few satellites break up and just recently two satellites collided.
This is not good and will add to the risk of launching to space.
Who keeps track of where our man made junk orbits?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-spacejunk0809feb08,0,7720847.story

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16584-satellite-collision-creates-copious-space-junk.html
Satellite collision creates copious space junk

Larry Kellogg

More at: BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/

Mars Technology Helps Create Inauguration Mega-Picture

Warning: links not suggested for cell phone viewing or those with slow Internet connections.
My apologies, still, hopefully we will get some of this kind of action when we go back to the Moon.
- LRK -

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NASA Science News for February 2, 2009

A private photographer has used NASA's Mars technology to create a 1,474 megapixel panoramic photo of President Obama's inauguration. The interactive mega-snapshot has become an international sensation, viewed by more than two million people in 186 countries. Today's story from Science@NASA presents the photo and tells how it was made.

FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/02feb_gigapan.htm?list965414

Check out our RSS feed at http://science.nasa.gov/rss.xml!

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If you have the bandwidth then more info - LRK -
http://gigapan.org/

The inspiration for the above came from the Mars Rover's Pan-Cam.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft_instru_pancam.html

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

More at: BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/