Wednesday 4 March 2009

Kepler Still on Schedule

Last meeting's brief talk about current and future space telescopes will soon be online at the society website if anyone would like a closer look at the slides in their own time.

In the mean time though I thought I would post a brief update on the Kepler Mission. All technical issues have been resolved and the Delta IV rocket is now fueled and ready for launch on Friday 6th March.

The current launch window is for 10:49 p.m. EST (3:49 am our time I believe). There is still a 5% chance that cloud cover will be too dense for the launch, but at this time the launch is still scheduled.

Latest news is always available at SpaceFlight Now and I will post updates as I hear about them.

I also found a new update to the information I had available at the meeting. Not only is the Spitzer telescope being launched in April, but on the same Ariane Rocket there will also be the Planck telescope. A new scope to make measurements of the CMB and the Hubble constant.

So an exciting time, but also a nail biting time, if a problem occurs on this rocket, both projects will be destroyed!

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Near Miss...

A NEO near miss...passed by on Monday night, but was only spotted on Sunday!!

I guess we got lucky this time!