I’m usually somewhat focused on the achievements of the US-American and Russian space agencys – a habit from back then (forgivable I hope – I am, after all, a cold war kid) so I often forget what excellent work other countries do. Emilia Lakdawallas blog at the planetay society website reminded me of the japanese Kaguya mission that has launched about two weeks ago. Read about the Kaguya mission at the JAXA website, but before you do this click the preview photo below. Kaguya is the first spacecraft that carries a HDTV camera beyond near earth orbit, and the probe took this stunning picture of our home planet (click for the impressive version):

This is earth. Looks kinda small, doesn’t it ? Perhaps we should handle it with care, and try not to break it.

Okay, so this is the worst pun ever, but the good news is that as of yesterday NASAs Dawn Mission is on it’s way. Dawn is a mission to the asteroid belt and more specifically to Vesta and Ceres, two really, really huge rocks in space ( 500 km / 1000 km across) that feature in many science fiction novels as the most likely place for human habitats in the asteroid belt. Oh, and I guess they are of some scientific interest, too. Dawn had been effectivly canceled, was reinstated, then delayed – NASA has a problem with its science budget (I don’t follow american fiscal politics that closely but it would seem that the overall budget woes are due to governmental pressure while the unwise distribution of the remaining funds is a self inflicted problem, but what do I know) – so it’s some relief that things finally got going.

So on the following pages you will find the really interesting stuff about the dawn mission:

• The offical mission pages at nasa.gov
• An article about the dawn mission by Astronomer Amara Graps
• Emily Lakdawalla and Guest bloggers covered the launch in Emilys blog at the planetary society
• Philipp Plait mentions the launch at his badastronomy.com website, and if your at all interested in astronomy and space exploration you should check out the rest of his site
• The same goes for Fraser Cains’ Universe Today Website. This is not safe for work, not because there’s anything naughty on the site but because you can spent hours or days exploring the stuff there, and your boss probably won’t like that

My heart really belongs to manned space exploration, but I have to admit that at the moment unmanned probes provide better bang for the buck. And I’m really looking forward to learn more about the asteroid belt and Ceres and Vesta.

Voyager 1 was launched Sept. 5, 1977 atop a Titan rocket with a Centaur-6 upper stage. Still operational for 30 years, Voyager 1 is more than 103.2 astronomical units away from the Sun.

Info at Wired: http://www.wired.com/science/space/multimedia/2007/09/gallery_voyager_30

A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space.

Info at NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyagerf-20070905.html

As a child – a space junkie even back then – I used to watch space shuttle launches with religious zeal. Compared to non-reusable capsules like Apollo or Soyuz the Orbiter looked like the first real spacecraft (like, you know, one from those science fiction books) which very well may be one of the reasons it was built the way it was built (because engineers read science fiction, too).

I broke the habit when Challenger exploded in 1986. I loved the Shuttle (still do) , but watching astronauts die in real time was a bit too unnerving for my taste, and with every new launch I was afraid that fatal accidents would happen again – as alas one did in 2003.

Luckily NASA was less afraid. After a major overhaul (a.k.a Orbiter Major Modification period) Endeavour was launched yesterday at 6:36 p.m. (about 0.30 this morning here in Berlin), and this time I was watching again live on NASA TV. This was, after all, one of the very few remaining opportunities to see a Shuttle launch.

One member of the Endeavour crew is Barbara Radding Morgan, who used to teach in elementary school and was the backup candidate for the NASA Teacher in Space Program during the Challenger Mission when her colleaugue Christa McAuliffe perished in the explosion.

If anybody ever deserved to go to space it’s certainly her – Barbara Morgan absolutely rocks. She completed the necessary training to become a ‘real’ astronaut and has been assigned as a full-fledged mission specialist to the ST-118 Mission (go read the Interviews at the STS-118 Mission Pages). If the world absolutely needs heroes I think astronaut teachers are the best kind we can get.