Astronomy Night AZ Style

After departing Houston on Road Trip #432 (that's just a wild guess), I drove through Arizona (it's rather IN THE WAY if one hopes to reach California) and stopped in Ahwatukee (a suburb of Phoenix) to join a giant crowd of fellow nerds (genus: Not-Trekkie-Nerds) at Astronomy Night at the Akimel A-al School!

That may have been the most distracted compound sentence to ever appear on my blog. But, it's December and you're all too busy shopping to read things carefully anyway. So posts this week will be largely pictorial...

8th graders know more than you do

This delightful annual event for students, parents and local space enthusiasts is open to the public, so I didn't even have to sneak in just because I'm a hopeless astronaut groupie!

Yes, there was an astronaut there, and I will feature him tomorrow... but first! Check out some of the amazing projects completed by the 7th and 8th graders of the local Middle School.

Pluto still gets lots of love

I must say, it was so immensely gratifying to see such widespread interest in so many areas of science by energetic and curious youngsters, many of whom incorporated profound research and even some beautiful works of art into their chosen projects.

Clearly, this school benefits from enthusiastic teachers, involved parents, and participation from local clubs and museums -- including the Saguaro Astronomy Club, the Phoenix Astronomical Society and even the esteemed Challenger Space Center of Arizona -- many of whom sent speakers, laptop presentations, interactive games for all ages, and even models of asteroids.

Local teacher trained by NASA Marshall to handle Moon Rocks!

The evening's festivities included telescope viewings in nearby sports fields, a portable Planetarium, and... door prizes. Well, any reason to sell raffle tickets at school events -- heaven knows the government sure doesn't value science enough!

Conveniently, and in addition to the Space Shuttle pilot who spoke, there was also a meteorite pro on-hand to answer questions about extra-terrestrial rocks and how to find them on Earth. When YouTube finally starts cooperating this week instead of ruthlessly changing all of our channel front formats, I'll embed a few clips for our viewing pleasure...

What, indeed?

Check out my Astronomy Night album in my Picasa Gallery to see more wonderful projects from a whole lotta smart kids, including cosmological breakfast cereals and NASA space suit diagrams. Many more videos and pictures to come of this great event, so stay tuned!

Mars500 Tweetup!

In early November, the Mars500 crew left the isolation of their spaceship when they "landed" back on Earth after a 520-day mission simulation to the Red Planet.


Following the official hatch opening, the crew faced continued medical checks and follow-up studies that were compared to their pre-simulation data. Alexey, Sukrob, Aleksandr, Wang, Romain and Diego (the latter two are keeping everyone updated from their Twitter accounts) will for some time remain under the eye of the mission controllers as data is analyzed, but can now enjoy all those things they probably took for granted before in life... family and friends... sunshine and trees... life on Earth!

Some members of the crew are on a rock star tour of sorts, attending PR events sponsored by the ESA for the European members in France, Italy and Spain. Each of these are designed to communicate their experiences and early sim results to teachers, university students, media and other space agency reps.

On December 6th, a Mars500 Tweetup was held in Rome for a select lucky few; Luca Di Fino of Rome, who tweets under the @ Luke2375 handle, was kind enough to share some of his wonderful photographs from this fun event.

Romain, Kate, Stefania & Diego...
The Mars500 crew and the AFSC crew!

Two of the attendees of the Tweetup were none other than @SpaceKate and @Stelgys – you may remember them from the Mars500 All Female Symbolic Crew, a group of science-minded ladies who closely followed the Mars500 project over the past 2 years.

Luke is a physicist involved in the ALTEA experiment aboard the ISS who also writes the ALTEA Space blog in English and the LucaDiFino blog in Italian. Both carried reports of the Mars500 Tweetup and fantastic photos.

Using the hashtag #mars500tweetup, he even compiled every Tweetup contribution from the event in Rome! Great job!


The Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMBP-RAS) recently published a Mars500 Simulation completion report, with an introduction by Roskosmos head V. A. Popovkin.

The 16-page PDF media kit includes details on psychological evaluations, off-nominal situations, Mars surface rock-collecting simulation, system verifications, crew health verifications, medical controls, and scientific programs of the mission.

Asteroid Astronauts

Every astronaut or cosmonaut who has perished in space flight (3), died during launch (7) or died during re-entry to Earth's atmosphere (8) have been commemorated with various posthumous medals, statues, memorials and museum exhibits.

Some have had libraries, schools or streets named after them in their hometowns, or even geological formations on the Moon or Mars titled in their memory. Still others have been the subjects of songs, documentaries, and one disaster was dramatized in a TV movie.

Among all these variations, all the fallen space travelers have one specific honor in common... all have asteroids named after them.

Soyuz 1 crew:
1836 Komarov (Vladimir)

Soyuz 11 crew:
1789 Dobrovolsky (Georgi)
1790 Volkov (Vladislav)
1791 Patsayev (Viktor)

STS-51-L Challenger crew:
3350 Scobee (Francis "Dick")
3351 Smith (Michael)
3352 McAuliffe (Christa)
3353 Jarvis (Greg)
3354 McNair (Ronald)
3355 Onizuka (Ellison)
3356 Resnik (Judith)

STS-107 Columbia crew:
51823 RickHusband
51824 MikeAnderson
51825 DavidBrown
51826 KalpanaChawla
51827 LaurelClark
51828 IlanRamon
51829 WillieMcCool

I'm an Asteroid.
So get out of the way...

Many other space travelers have also had asteroids named after them for various reasons, and while not as exclusive as the group of Moon Walkers, it's a pretty darned small club!

In order of discovery + naming, they are:

1772 Gagarin (Yuri) - Russia
2552 Remek (Vladimír) - Czech
4763 Ride (Sally) - USA
6469 Armstrong (Neil) - USA
6470 Aldrin ("Buzz") - USA
6471 Collins (Michael) - USA
7749 JackSchmitt - USA
9496 Ockels (Wubbo) - Holland
9512 FeiJunlong - China (Renamed)
9517 NieHaisheng - China (Renamed)
12790 Cernan (Gene) - USA
13606 Bean (Alan) - USA (Renamed)
21064 YangLiwei - China
22442 Blaha (John) - USA
22901 IvanBella - Slovakia

All are Main Belt Asteroids. See the accompanying links to examine their orbital paths, physical parameters and circumstance under which each was discovered.

For general information about asteroids, go to the Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science page for the Asteroid Fact Sheet.

The Astronaut State

Do you know how special the state of Ohio is to NASA? 21 astronauts were born in Ohio, 4 more moved there as small children and thus consider Ohio their home, and 12 more got their college degrees in Ohio! Wow.

Why so many from Ohio? Perhaps it's because two great astronaut role models, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, are from Ohio. Perhaps it's because, thanks to the Wright Brothers, Ohio is the birthplace of flight? Probably a combination of both, and given early education about famous flyers from their state, more folks from Ohio grow up dreaming about the stars!


Still, the number of inhabitants in Ohio (which contains only 3% of the entire American population) is rather low in comparison to California, Florida or Texas, where one might expect a greater showing in the astronaut corps. Nope! Percentage-wise, Ohio tops the list with their magic #21:

1921: John Glenn - Cambridge
1926: Karl Henize - Cincinnati
1928: James Lovell - Cleveland
1930: Neil Armstrong - Wapakoneta
1930: Donn Eisele - Columbus
1931: Charles Bassett - Dayton
1949: Kenneth Cameron - Cleveland
1949: Judith Resnik - Akron
1951: Ronald Parise - Warren
1952: Ronald Sega - Macedonia
1952: Terence Henricks - Bryan
1955: Carl Erwin Walz - Cleveland
1955: Donald Thomas - Cleveland
1956: Gregory Harbaugh - Cleveland
1956: G. David Low - Cleveland
1956: Michael Gernhardt - Mansfield
1957: Michael Foreman - Columbus
1958: Nancy Currie - Troy
1962: Mary Ellen Weber - Cleveland
1962: Michael Good - Parma
1965: Sunita Williams - Euclid


Ohio is also the only state to boast nearly an entire mission crew from within their borders! Ohioans definitely followed STS-70 with great prid, because four of five astronauts on Space Shuttle Discovery -- Nancy Currie, Tom Henricks, Don Thomas, and Mary Ellen Weber -- were from Ohio. Then Governor George Voinovich attended the launch and made the fifth crew member, Kevin Kregel, an "honorary Ohio citizen".

During the flight, the mission control center played the Cleveland Indians baseball song as a wake-up call for the crew. (Nancy Currie was actually born in Delaware but moved as a baby to Troy, Ohio… so she considers this her "hometown" . What do you think? Should we them get away with that one?)

I am not always enamored of their choice of words, but CRACKED.com did commentary on how "Ohio Is Full of Astronauts" in one of their famously sarcastic essays, Six Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened.

Terribly amusing, but don't click if you're easily offended by profanity. Cracked.com isn't always Safe-For-Work!