Solar Dynamic Observatory Powered Up

Back in February we Launched the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) aboard an Atlas V. I spent a bunch of time over the past two years working on this mission, so it is really cool to see some of the science that it is now doing. The first images came back from SDO yesterday. Never before have we had so much data for helio science.

SDO has a suite of three state of the art instruments that will rewrite heliophysics theory. Imagery from Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (above) shows surface eruptions emitting strings of plasma into the solar atmosphere and sending powerful shock waves across the sun. The AIA features four telescopes designed to be sensitive at different temperatures, producing information on solar heat flux. Another instrument, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, will probe the Sun's interior to track developing solar storms from their origins deep inside the Sun to the violent eruptions at the surface. Finally, The EVE ultraviolet instrument studies space weather, the link between the Sun and the Earth that can affect communications and navigation signals. While the satellite's other two instruments study the formation of storms on the sun, EVE directly measures how they impact Earth.

World Pond Skimming Championships

This was a pretty spectacular event up at Vail on Sunday! I am featured briefly at around a minute into this video. Look for the cowboy getup. Tyler Hamilton, Olympic gold medal bike racer, is two skiers after me in the Captain America pants.

X-37B to Launch

The X-37B ready to be encapsulated in the Atlas V fairing at KSC. Credit: U.S. Air Force

The X-37B is basically a 1/4 size, fully-autonomous shuttle, including a cargo bay the size of my Tacoma's bed, that will hitch a ride to space later today aboard a ULA Atlas V-501 rocket. Launch is scheduled for 7:52 EDT and can be viewed on the ULA website. A bunch of different agencies have sponsored the X-37B over the years, first it was a NASA project, then DARPA, now it is run out of the USAF's Rapid Capabilities shop. Boeing Phantom Works built it.

While the payload and mission are tightly kept secrets, a lot is known about the X-37B itself. The super cool things about this mission from an engineering standpoint are the spacecraft's advanced silica thermal protection tiles and autonomous guidance system. At the end of the flight that guidance system has to fire the craft's main engine to drop the ship from orbit. The spaceplane will re-enter the atmosphere and make a high-speed landing at nearly 300 mph on the three mile long runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base. To do this it will be relying entirely on it's own autopilot, which gets input only from on-board gyroscopes, a GPS receiver, and an altimeter. How cool is that?

Feel free to speculate wildly about what the Air Force might do with the capability to release and capture satellites, stay on orbit for up to a year and land anywhere in the world within hours...