Shuttles Come Nose-to-Nose
"NASA's space shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis switched locations today at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and in the process came "nose-to-nose" for the last time in front of Orbiter Processing Facility 3.
Endeavour was moved from Orbiter Processing Facility 2 to the Vehicle Assembly Building where it will be housed temporarily until its targeted departure from Kennedy atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft in mid-September. After a stop at the Los Angeles International Airport, Endeavour will move in mid-October to the California Science Center for permanent public display.
Now in the processing facility after leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building, shuttle Atlantis will undergo preparations for its move to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November, with a grand opening planned for July 2013."
Source: NASA
Canadarm2 and HTV-3
"In the grasp of the International Space Station's robotic Canadarm2, the HTV-3 Exposed Pallet is moved for installation on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-3) currently docked to the space station. Earth's horizon and the blackness of space provide the backdrop for the scene."
Source: NASA
The sound of a dying star
(CNN) – Think of this: you’re an astronomer, and you and your team have detected, for the first time, a star being devoured by a supermassive black hole almost four billion light years away.
This is the first time astronomers have captured this drama happening so long ago – and so far away – with a black hole this large.
So, you’re the astronomer – and your team sees this by scanning and crunching a pile of numbers.
(The numbers represent the signals captured by NASA’s SWIFT satellite and orbiting telescopes, and beamed down to Earth.)
Fine. But how do you get this across to the REST of us?
The astronomer we’re talking about is Jon Miller at the University of Michigan. He figured – what if we describe what it would SOUND like?
[2:43] “Sound doesn’t travel in space, unfortunately. But Star Wars wouldn’t have been much fun if things blew up silently, right?”
So he and his team translated the frequency of the signals they captured in all those numbers into a sound. Listen to find out how.
Listen to this story at CNN Radio's Soundwaves
@CNNLightYears on Twitter
People in Orbit
Expedition 36 Commander
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Contributors
-
Elizabeth Landau
Writer/Producer -
Sophia Dengo
Senior Designer
