The Planets: The Retro Space Poster Art of Steve Thomas

Visit Steve Thomas's site for more great poster art. A great new creative experience in retro-style Art, with more than a touch of Humour.

NASA Space Shuttle Discovery: National Air and Space Museum

Discovery is expected to land at Washington Dulles International Airport on April 17 and transfer to the Udvar-Hazy Center on April 19. 

Join us to launch Space Shuttle Discovery on its new mission to educate & inspire!

Activities related to the arrival of Discovery — including a fly-over — have not been finalized at this time. 

Information on arrival activities, including public events and opportunities, will be released at a later date.

Discovery, the champion of the space shuttle fleet, associated with major historic, scientific and technological achievements, will be the first of the flown space shuttles to go on display.

Exact details will become available in the next few weeks. Check back here for updates. You can also subscribe to the Museum's e-newsletter, What's Up, fan our Facebook page, or follow @airandspace on Twitter for the latest news.

Please note that arrival activities are weather contingent and will be rescheduled in the event of inclement conditions.

For those participating from a distance, many of the activities will be available for viewing on TV or the web. Details coming soon.

Find out more about Space Shuttle Discovery

Arthur Valentine OBE: Val Cleaver the pioneer of UK space program

Sir Arthur C. Clarke described Val Cleaver as the man who should have been the British von Braun.

Born at Horsepath in Oxfordshire on February 14th 1917 (hence the name by which he was universally known), he became fascinated by Space by the age of 11.

Later in life he said that this interest arose from the fascinating possibilities of the achievement itself, and the absorbing interest of the problems involved. He became a member of the BIS in 1937.

He joined the Propeller Division of de Havillands in 1935. During the War he was responsible for establishing standards for evaluating the performance of the various airscrews in production at the time.

By 1946, at the end of the War, Val Cleaver was the Chief Project Engineer to the de Havilland Propeller Company, before transferring to the de Havilland Engine Company as Special Projects Engineer.

Major Frank Halford was at that time the Technical Director of the engine company. As reports of the rocket developments in Germany during the war became available he commissioned Val Cleaver to carry out a one-man study on rocket feasibilities. Val later described this period as his apprenticeship in rocket propulsion.

In 1948 he became Chairman of the BIS for three years. In the same year he published a paper in JBIS in collaboration with Les Shepherd on “The Atomic Rocket”, providing the first published paper in the open literature to propose the use of nuclear powered engines with hydrogen as a working fluid.

Sprite mono-propellant rocket engine

During the early 1950s he was responsible for the development of the Sprite liquid propellant rocket, initially as a take-off assistance for the Comet jet aircraft, but later for the early V-bombers.

During the same period the idea of a mixed powerplant fighter using rocket and turbojet propulsion to reach high altitudes very quickly was being considered.

Val Cleaver formed a close friendship with Maurice Brennan at Saunders Roe, from which developed the SR53 aircraft and the design for the SR177.

In 1956 Val Cleaver handed in his resignation from de Havillands, and in 1957 he joined Rolls Royce as Chief Engineer of their newly formed rocket team.



At this point there was a major contract to develop the rocket engine for the UK’s Blue Streak missile.

The original rocket engine was a straightforward version of that used on the US Thor missile, produced under licence from North American Aviation, but under Val’s guidance the RZ-2 rocket engines for Blue Streak were considerably more powerful and lighter.

Model of the European Launcher Development Organisation's Europa vehicle, c.1964.

While the ELDO vehicle was ultimately unsuccessful and abandoned, the Blue Streak vehicle and its RZ-2 engines worked perfectly on each of its 13 launches, and Cleaver was awarded the OBE for his part in it.

In the closing days of ELDO the Rolls Royce team took on STERN,  the development of Europe’s first hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine, the RZ-20.

He was made an Honorary Fellow of the BIS in 1962. He died on 16th September 1977.

Tiangong 1 Module: China to attempt first space rendezvous

China will attempt its first space docking between two unmanned vehicles this year, the first step in efforts to build a Chinese space station, a senior official said Friday.

Yang Liwei detailed the next stages of China's human spaceflight programme during a press visit to Space City in Beijing, a research and training centre normally closed to the public.

"Our next goal is to realise a space docking of two vehicles during the second half of 2011," said Yang, whose journey into space in 2003 made him the first Chinese astronaut.

The manoeuvre will involve the Tiangong 1 module and the Shenzhou 8 rocket, said Yang, confirming an announcement made last October.

Tiangong means "Celestial Palace" and the eight-tonne orbiter is on a two-year mission that will see it rendezvous in 2012 with the Shenzhou 9 and 10 rockets, both of which will have astronauts on board.

Before 2016, China will launch a space laboratory and, Yang said, "around 2020, we plan to realise the construction of a space station in orbit for long-term stays in space".

China's space station will be made up of a core module, two laboratories, a cargo ship and a manned rocket, with a total weight of 60 tonnes, compared with 137 tonnes for the Russian station Mir and 419 tonnes for the International Space Station (ISS), the China Daily reported this week.

"China would like to cooperate with other countries" on the peaceful use of space, said Yang, who holds the rank of major general in the Chinese army, which runs the country's manned space flight programme.

Asked about Chinese plans to send men to the moon, he said: "The Chinese have no specific lunar mission now," but added that such a project was under consideration.

"I really experienced the prestige that space can bring to a country," he said.

Lego Space Site

Click on the picture above to visit the Lego Space website

Here

Chinese Scientists Seek Support For Dark Matter Mission In Space

Chinese Scientists Seek Support For Dark Matter Mission In Space

Chinese scientists are lobbying for greater government support for a groundbreaking project that would see the launch of a satellite to investigate mysterious dark matter in space.

The Center for Space Science and Applied Research (CSSAR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was focusing on developing China's first astronomical satellite to prove the existence of dark matter.

"This would be a major breakthrough in the field of basic science which has been dormant for decades since Einstein's Theory of Relativity," said center director Wu Ji.

Dark matter and dark energy represent the vast majority of the mass in the observable universe, but their presence is only inferred from their gravitational effects on visible matter. Dark matter is believed to play a central role in galaxy evolution and the formation of universe.

Mines make Big Holes in the Earth as seen from Space

Earth from Space: Typhoon Melor Pictures

This Envisat image captures Typhoon Melor spinning in the Pacific Ocean northeast of the Philippines on 6 October before slamming into the main Japanese island of Honshu on Thursday.
As the typhoon approached Honshu, it was generating winds of 198 km/h, but weakened after making landfall. The strong winds associated with Melor have toppled trees and power lines, leaving some 10 000 homes without electricity.
By early Thursday, the storm was moving northwest at 30 km/h, carrying a maximum sustained wind speed reaching 111 km/h, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Melor is the first typhoon to make landfall in Japan since Typhoon Fitow hit in 2007. Last year was the first time in eight years that a typhoon did not hit the island.

Typhoons and hurricanes are different names for the same kind of storm – a tropical cyclone. If a storm begins in the Atlantic Ocean or the Eastern Pacific Ocean it is called a hurricane, and if it begins in the Western Pacific it is called a typhoon. Typhoons usually pack stronger winds than hurricanes.

10 Great Ideas that may make it into Space

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EADS TV Video - Spectacular

winmedia.asx (video/x-ms-asf Object)

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NASA Shuttle Discovery: Leonardo Logistic Module

Leonardo

Against the backdrop of the Earth's thin blue horizon and the blackness of space, the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module is visible in Discovery's payload bay.

Also visible in this image shot from an aft flight deck window are; the shuttle Discovery's vertical stabiliser, orbital maneuvering system pods, Orbiter Boom Sensor System and docking mechanism.

For the STS-128 mission, Leonardo carried 7.5 tons of supplies to the station, including two research racks (the Fluid Integrated Rack and the Materials Science Research Rack), a new station crew quarters, the Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI-2), the Air Revitalization System Rack and the COLBERT treadmill.

Image Credit: NASA

Inflatable Heat Shield Tested in Space

An inflatable heat shield was successfully tested on Monday, demonstrating for the first time that these light, flexible devices could be used to protect spacecraft on their way through planets' atmospheres.

Other spacecraft use solid heat shields that either drop away as the spacecraft near the surface, as happened with the Mars rovers, or gradually erode in the atmosphere.

These solid shields are heavy, and their weight limits the mass of the spacecraft they are designed to protect, since both must launch on the same rocket. Their physical size is also limiting, since the shields must be small enough to fit inside a launch rocket.

Balloon-like shields can in theory sidestep these issues, since they are lightweight and can inflate to relatively large sizes after being folded up during launch. These weight and size savings allow for heavier spacecraft payloads.

The new shield, called the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE), launched aboard a small rocket on Monday morning from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. It was the first successful test of an inflatable heat shield.

"We're totally thrilled with the data results we've received," says project manager Mary-Beth Wusk of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Twitter Cyber-Space and Outer Space Cadets

There are a startling number of cyber sites that will provide you with Twitter updates on everything astro-nomical and astro-physical.

Click on the Link to see some!