I recently had the opportunity to watch a brand new IMAX feature, called A Beautiful Planet. It features incredible views of the Earth from space, captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Most of the footage was taken during Expedition 42 on the ISS, starting with the arrival of Samantha Cristoforetti, Terry Virts, and Anton Shkaplerov aboard the Soyuz TMA-15M, and ending with their departure. Much of the film was focused on the views of Earth, the scenic diversity of life and land that can only be seen from space. It was difficult to see the effects of humans during the day time,...
Let me ask you, when you look at the stars on a cold, clear night, what do you see? Diamonds sparkling? Shapes? I do see those things, but I also see so much more. When I look at the stars, I see a thousand generations of humans looking up in wonder, writing shapes in the dirt and telling incredible stories of brave heroes, ferocious beasts, and important lessons. I see our common ancestors using the sky to predict the weather, the seasons, and even the coming of the end of the world. They were looking at a comet in the...
How often does a star explode as a supernova in the Milky Way? With as many as 400 Billion stars, you would expect it to happen often But stars live a very long time, and most massive stars take anywhere from a few hundred million to a few billion years to reach maturity and explode. Putting all this together gives us a surprisingly human estimate. A supernova explodes in the Milky Way, on average, once every 50 years, or about once per human lifetime. We can still see remnants of great explosions that happened long ago, still expanding into the...
Occasionally it’s strange to see photos from the Curiosity Rover on Mars. Some of them feel distinctly like home. I can almost imagine a person walking by on the soft sand, through the pathway of rocks, and over the horizon, like a traveller navigating the desert. The latest panorama of Mars gives me that feeling in spades. And yet, this rusty world has too thin an atmosphere to allow a human to breathe. It has no water to drink, and intense radiation from the Sun that prevents life from blanketing its surface. It is human, and yet alien. No homo...
I was downtown Toronto this morning, dressed in a suit and holding my umbrella to stay dry and navigate the city streets as they were soaked with rain. I was headed to the CBC building on John street to do an interview about the SpaceX CRS-7 mission that would launch an hour later. This would be a very important mission, the seventh of twelve ISS resupply missions contracted by NASA. It was also the third attempt at a secondary goal – landing the first stage launch vehicle, the Falcon 9 rocket, upright on an ocean platform, a feat that had...
I’ve always been a fan of data visualization. We have so much raw data in the world that can reveal incredible information about our Universe, and the only thing stopping us is the time to analyse it all. Sometime data visualizations pop up that really put things into perspective, help us see trends that we didn’t know of before, and offer insights into where we should look in the future. I feel like I find something amazing that someone has produced on a daily basis, and being able to visualize complex data can give anyone a deeper understanding of the...
After yesterday’s scrubbed launch due to valve issues, the Orion spacecraft has launched on its first full test flight aboard a Delta IV rocket. This is the first step for humanity to reach beyond the Moon, and the Orion craft will eventually carry astronauts Watching it live and seeing everyone in the space flight community on twitter talking about it and posting pictures really makes you feel like a part of the mission itself. I feel like I’m there in mission control along with the NASA staff, and having followed the progress of the mission for so long it feels...
The Orion Spacecraft will eventually be the next vehicle to take humans further into space than ever before. But before it can do that, it requires extensive testing to ensure its ready to go! The short infographic below from the crew working on Orion gives us an idea of how the major December flight test will go, and the altitudes being tested. If you can’t see it, the axes are y (miles) vs. x (hours). Last short post of the week as my teaching conference STAO ends today!
