APOD: Dawn's Early Light, Rocket's Red Glare (2018 Jul 04)

[APOD Robot]

Dawn's Early Light, Rocket's Red Glare

Explanation: If you saw the dawn's early light from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last Friday, June 29, then you could have seen this rocket's red glare. The single 277-second long exposure, made from the roof of NASA's Vehicle Assembly building, shows a predawn Falcon 9 launch, the rocket streaking eastward into the sky about 45 minutes before sunrise. At high altitude, its stage separation plume is brightly lit by the Sun still below the eastern horizon. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage had been launched before, lofting the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) into orbit on April 18, only 72 days earlier. For this launch of SpaceX Commercial Resupply Service mission 15 (CRS-15) it carried an also previously flown Dragon capsule. But no further reuse of this Falcon 9 was planned so no dramatic first stage landing followed the launch. The Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station on July 2.

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[heehaw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JizuHg_c7Ng

[neufer]

<<The Lee Resolution (also known as "The Resolution for Independence") was the formal assertion passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776 which declared the establishment of a new country of United Colonies as independent from the British Empire. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, "The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America" News of this act was published that evening in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The text of the document formally announcing this action was the Declaration of Independence, approved two days later on July 4, 1776, which is celebrated as Independence Day.>>

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<July 2, 2018, 3 days after its launch from Florida, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was installed on the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 9:52 a.m. EDT. A technology demonstration arriving is an observational pilot study with the Crew Interactive MObile companioN (CIMON) that aims to provide first insights into the effects of crew support from an artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of efficiency and acceptance during long-term missions in space.>>

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[MarkBour]

Hmmm ... so far, this is their record, 2 flights. But SpaceX has introduced the "block 5", with the intent of pushing that number much higher.

The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/9/17254 ... ty-savings

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

NASA’s TESS Catches a Comet

<<This video is compiled from a series of images taken on July 25 by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The angular extent of the widest field of view is six degrees. Visible in the images are the comet C/2018 N1, asteroids, variable stars, asteroids and reflected light from Mars. TESS is expected to find thousands of planets around other nearby stars.

Video credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems Inc.): Technical Support Claire Saravia (NASA/GSFC): Lead Public Affairs Officer Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer Padi Boyd (NASA/GSFC): Scientist >>