Tag: NASA

1965 NASA PDAD Robot

The ‘Power Driven Articulated Dummy’ project was under Contract No. NAS 9-1370 and ran from May 22, 1963 through July 31, 1965. It was originally built for Nasa’s Manned Spacecraft Center by the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The reason for a test dummy was officials hoped to use it during design and testing of a spacesuits, which might otherwise be painful, tedious or even dangerous for human beings.

The 1965 robot was able to simulate 35 basic human motions and used sensors to gather data on how the human body acted in a pressurized suit – but it never made it off the ground due to its tendency to leak oil.

Only two of these robots were created, the one selling for $80,000 and another that is owned by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

[Found here; story with video here. More robot stuff here.]

Great Big Blobs

NASA scientists are studying planet magnetic fields and revisited raw data collected by Voyager 2 over three decades ago. They found that

Voyager 2 spotted a massive magnetic bubble pulling gas out of Uranus’ atmosphere.

https://www.space.com/uranus-gas-blob-voyager-2-discovery.html

Such loop-like plasmoids are typically formed as a spinning planet flings bits of its atmosphere to space. “Centrifugal forces take over, and the plasmoid pinches off.”

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/details.php?article_id=119

Uranus pinches off big blobs and flings them.

NASA 1965

Gemini SpacecraftAstronauts James McDivitt and Ed White inside the Gemini spacecraft for a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida, 1965

[Image and caption found here.] More about Ed White here.

Full Moon Heros

APOLLO Astronauts Collins Lovell & Aldrin

Mike Collins, Jim Lovell & I [Buzz Aldrin] got a behind the scenes look at the Orion capsule being built at Kennedy Space Center. Like our bunny suits?

I shouldn’t have to tell you who these guys are or what they did, but all three have titanium cojones.

Lovell’s book “Lost Moon” is a can’t-put-down white-knuckle read, and was the basis for the excellent movie “Apollo 13.”

[Image and Aldrin’s caption found here.]

P.S. Tonight’s full moon is a “supermoon.”

NASA Launch

NASA Frog Launch

On 6 September 2013, NASA ignited a Minotaur V rocket that launched the LADEE spacecraft. Continue reading “NASA Launch”

Hot ‘Lanta in May

Hot Lanta

On May 11-12, 1997, NASA used a specially outfitted Lear Jet to collect thermal data on metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. Nicknamed “Hot-Lanta” by some of its residents, the city saw daytime air temperatures of only about 26.7 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) on those days, but some of its surface temperatures soared to 47.8 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit). In this image, blue shows cool temperatures and red shows warm temperatures. Pockets of especially hot temperatures appear in white.

50 degrees Celsius = 120 degrees Fahrenheit = flat roof temperature. The red zone looks to be about 30C = 86F, but these are surface temperatures. The 1997 survey recorded air temperatures of 80 F – exactly the average high temp for May for Atlanta. Cool.

In other words, it’s a peachy image of normal surface temperatures for the city.

[Found here, which links to story here.]