Just watched the landing of the shuttle Endeavor on NASA TV, all went perfectly well.
Beautiful video footage.
Now it is time for some sleep.
And no further radio comms were heard in the last pass over Europe.
Endeavor on the ground again
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Category Archives: technology
Waiting for the Space Shuttle to land
In about 2 hours from now the Shuttle Endeavor should land at Edwards Air Force base, since the weather forecast for Florida is poor both today and tomorrow.
Just heard comms on their UHF frequency (259.700MHz), read back of data for the landing procedure.
There is one more orbit before landing, and I will try to listen once more tonight.
eBook reading on the iPod Touch
Yes – the 2.0 software for the iPod Touch allows (finally !) 3rd party software to be installed, making the Touch a more versatile piece of equipment than just a browser and audio/video player. Suddenly it becomes more of a PDA.
I downloaded the Stanza ebook reader to the Touch. It allows downloads of free ebooks from project Gutenberg. I downloaded a few, and got to read one for now. Having watched the “Jekyll” miniseries on DVD I got curious and wanted to (re)read the story giving the inspiration for the series – the short story “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Also I downloaded a few ebooks that come as applications for the Touch. Mike Stackpole has a few there, mostly short stories, but his novel “One a Hero” is there as well.
I have read a bit of those as well.
The small screen of the Touch is not really ideal for the purpose, but if you go travelling and want to travel “light” it is an option for having a set of books with you. It is easy to adjust the font size for relatively comfortable reading. Just don’t expect to read a novel in one go on the iPod Touch.
Bloated Linux
I have been using the standard Ubuntu Linux with the GNOME interface for a while with my small eeeBox.
The Atom processor got exhausted rather fast just running a browser, chat client and satellite tracking program.
Switch the desktop from Gnome to XFce, a lightweight desktop environment, and bingo, things run faster and the processor does not run into the 100% barrier. Looks like I will configure the XFce a bit, but that is a small price to pay for some speed.
Of course – it does not look as sleek as the other desktop, but I want functionality, not eye candy.
The “Blessings” of a Linux distribution.
Or rather – “why does a package not work as it is supposed to be ?”
Today I tried to install a text mode satellite tracking program under Ubuntu. It installs fine and starts up, asking for some initial data (“this is the first time….”). I enter the data, the program exits. Sounds ok. The screen (window) looks strange, I restart the program : “this is the first time …”
I do not know what is wrong, something is incompatible. Probably the modifications used by the distribution.
When I get time I will look into it, for now that will have to wait. But it is annoying.
10th Anniversary for ISS
10 years ago today, on 20th November 1998, the first module of the International Space Station, the Russian Zarya module was launched.
At the moment of writing the ISS passes above my head (nearly), and an amateur satellite listener/tracker has strong signals coming down on the S-band (2217.5 MHz).
Since then the ISS has been built up *very* slowly, mainly due to the lots of maintenance of the Space Shuttle fleet, and of course the re-entry failure of Columbia.
Right now the crews of ISS and Endeavor are busy repairing solar panels and installing living quarters for 3 more people, making the ISS ready for what should have been the normal crew of 6.
I am looking forward to seeing the ISS fully operational.
Chandrayaan 1 lets Lunar impactor on the loose
The Indian Moon probe Chandrayaan 1 has successfully entered into its operational orbit about 100km over the surface of the Moon.
On Friday the Moon Impact Probe was released for a crash landing near the Moon’s South Pole. While diving the impactor sent images and telemetry back to the orbiter, those will be relayed back to Earth at a slower pace. The descent took about 25 minutes and the data will be relayed in the next few days.
Instruments are beginning to be activated, and a new chapter in the lunar exploration is beginning.
The probe has already sent some very good images back, see link below.
Full story from
“When the Power goes …. Chaos Reigns” (J.C. Hutchins)
– or at least the Internet connection disappears.
This evening I have been powerless for a few hours. I was just taking a break and should be starting my daily post when the lights first faded for a few seconds – then went out. DSL-Modem, computers radio and TV etc – the whole house was dead.
Now what ? since this is quite unusual for this area I first looked out of my windows, and the flats in the next street had lights on – looked to the other corner – more lights. Went to the other side of the flat : a dark area for some miles/km – where there would normally be a sea of lights.
I found myself in one corner of a dark area, with light on two sides. Hmmm. I do not know exactly what happened, but my guess is that a transformer station went up in smoke – likely due to an overload – it can happen if someone digs into a cable (seen that before).
Find a flashlight – I have one or two LED flashlights around , talk to neighbours, one had a non working flashlight – fortunately it just needed new batteries, and she had spares.
No lights, no reading, no tv , no computers, and certainly no internet.
Actually, I don’t mind the dark, then the stars become visible. Unfortunately the stars are blocked by “The Great Northern European Nebula” , aka clouds, so no luck there. Well – I was a little tired, so had an excuse to take a rest.
It took a few hours for the power to return here, so no real harm done.
Funny how much we depend on electricity for our daily activities nowadays. Make me think that I should have some backup power system. Not easy in the flat, but at my house “back home” – that is another matter. I should plan to make some kind of renewable energy generation there, so it is ready when I return to my home country.
Chandrayaan 1 enters orbit around the Moon
First the Americans and the Russians, then the Japanese and Chinese. Now the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has aimed for the Moon. India is now the fifth country to reach the Moon. Yes, the European Space Agency has done it, too, but that is a consortium of 17 countries, though the size of the population is comparable to that of the USA.
The space craft is “Chandrayaan 1”. The name means “Moon Craft” in the ancient Sanskrit” language of India.
What I like is that the Indians, unlike the Chinese and Japanese, have invited other countries to contribute instruments to the probe. More than half of them are Indian, but NASA has two sensors, ESA has three sensors and Bulgaria has contributed a radiation sensor.
Chandrayaan 1 will help create a map of mineral concentrations all over the Moon, paving the way for the decisions on where to send (manned) expeditions to the Moon.
This and other collaborations is what I think has to be done. Space exploration is expensive, and a single country, however rich, cannot afford to go it alone.
More information :
Setting up a “new” system with Linux
This week end I am going to re-establish a somewhat faster Linux machine than the one I am writing this post on (1GHz Pentium 3 gets rather sluggish when Flash is running in the browser).
At some stage I installed Arch Linux on that machine with a Sempron processor – it worked fine for a while, then apparently due to the “rolling update” something went wrong, and I lost the graphical setup.
Now, I am no Linux guru, so decided to do it the old fashined “Windows- way” – reinstalling. Oops. with a mixture of parallel and serial ATA the “#&/”/&¤% thing could not boot. What I plan to do ? install only serial ATA disks, install OS , transfer data from the PATA disks via USB – and that should do it.
I am planning on using Ubuntu.