Added 2 new A* pages:Is Proctor pimping this hairnet, or what?
Space stuff keeps happening! It's been kind of busy lately. A three-person crew consisting of an American, Russian, and Italian just launched in a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan to rendezvous with the International Space Station. This "Expedition 26" mission is pretty routine stuff, but the article had some interesting details about the deal with Russia's space agency that gives NASA the use of their big Soyuz-equipped Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan: "A round-trip ticket to the space station in 2011 and 2012 will cost NASA as much as $51 million, up from the current $26 million. The price will jump to $56 million in 2013 and 2014." Now we can see why NASA is so anxious to encourage the development of the commercial space shuttles I've been mentioning in the past few days!
It also gives me a chance so show the more modern version of that old Soviet flared thruster cowling design style; here's a photo of the launch:
image by NASA (source)
The harpoon-like nose is kind of neat, too!
NASA has a video of the launch; again, once you've seen a rocket launch, you've pretty much seen 'em all... Lots of lens flare from the thrusters in this night launch. And also near the end it switches to the crew saying "nominal" repeatedly just to make sure everything's okay, and you can see how they're so packed in with supplies for the station that they can barely move! Too bad they didn't show them during launch, though, so we could see how they stood the stress of all that thrust; well, I guess that isn't really photogenic. :P
And while I was trolling around NASA's site I also noticed other space news yesterday/today: having been in orbit around Mars for 3,340 days, NASA's Odyssey probe has just set the record for longest operating time on Mars. Woo. Anyway they've compiled a video of Odyssey mission highlights that's kind of a handy way to catch up on what that thing's all about.
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