Today's New York Times carries a lengthy article on the US reconsat program: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/washington/11satellite.html?ref=science#step1 I must say I'm not too thrilled with the way the NYT uses every opportunity to disparage the government, particularly the space program. A few days ago it headlined how NASA was "scrambling" to fix the broken solar panel on the ISS. Why not use the word "mobilizing"? The word "scrambling" carries an I believe unwarranted subtle message of incompetence, as in the expression "mad scramble." Add up thousands of these kinds of subtle, subliminal digs every day and it must surely affect the psychology of the readership. San Diego has recently been plagued with evening clouds, but things cleared up a bit last night and a friend and I went out to find Comet Holmes. Sure enough, there it was. It showed up quite nicely in 11x80 binoculars, about half the size of the moon. My pal could easily see it without the binoculars but I could not make it out--the sky is pretty bright in the city and my eyesight is not what it used to be. I wonder which of the two new ISS debris pieces is the pliers that Scott Parazynski let go on his panel-repair spacewalk. Finally, I note the current absence of 2007-054 from SpaceTrack's SatCat. Guess this is because the launch is classified. I expect three objects: the Delta 4 2nd stage (in an LEO), the Delta 4 3rd stage (in a HEO transfer orbit), and the DSP spacecraft (in HEO). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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