Behind the Scenes of DESTINATION MOON

WOW!! I got to attend the "press preview" of the amazing new exhibit Destination Moon at the Museum of Flight (opens April 13, 2019) in Seattle! Here is an exclusive FIRST LOOK at this exhibit, including interviews with curators from the Museum of Flight (Geoff Nunn) and Smithsonian (Kathrin Halpern), and insights from the Museum of Flight's CEO (Matt Hayes). Plus tons of cool space stuff!

I've only scratched the surface of Destination Moon in this video. Of course the centerpiece is Columbia, the Apollo 11 Command Module. This is THE BEST view you'll ever get of the CM, no glass or case covering it! But there is so much more... flight suits, EVA gear, tactile and VR exhibits, and even the real "F1" engines from the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo 11 (they were rescued off the ocean floor!).

If you're in Seattle, GO SEE THIS to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing!


The Museum of Flight
https://twitter.com/MuseumofFlight
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Special thanks to @spacefactswax for connecting me with this press preview!



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13 Hours

I did the 1-day-wonder trip: down to CA and back on the same day. A bit brutal on the sleeping schedule, but a great way to pop in and visit friends and colleagues at NASA Ames!

I was hanging out with folks in the Kepler/K2 office, unknowingly during one (what appears to be) of the final weeks of regular operations for the K2 observing campaign. Of course, science from this amazing platform is going to continue to be produced for next decade, so it was a real treat to get to sit in on an operations phone-con to see how each campaign of K2 is scheduled!

Kepler takes a nap

Today we got an email saying that NASA's amazing Kepler telescope, which I have used as the backbone of my research since at least 2013, was put into a "nap mode". The concern is a dropping fuel level, which you can read about here. This is likely the beginning of the end for the observational portion of the mission - though the science impact will continue to grow for the next decade!

Here's a short video with some thoughts on this mission and how it has changed my life!

We Have LIFTOFF!

After the scrubbed launch on Monday, my wife helped convince me to stay the extra two days in Florida to see the next attempt... and on Wednesday last week I was privileged to watch one of the most amazing things I've ever seen!

Check out this week's vlog for a personal look at TESS launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9:

Rocket Launch?

I've never had the chance to see a real rocket launch - until now! I was invited to come watch the launch of TESS, NASA's new exoplanet hunting mission. This is because I was the lead on one of the first "Guest Investigator" programs, which will do all the other science with TESS beyond finding neat planets. This mission will likely be the cornerstone of my research for the next several years!

So now I'm traveling to Florida to watch a telescope get launched in to space!! WOOO!

Alas, the launch was scrubbed on Monday, but is slated now for Wednesday. You can watch the launch live here!

Kepler's Selfie from Outer Space

Yesterday I received a picture that I've been waiting for over 2 years to see! I posted a longer article about this image in late November, but in short: as part of the normal operations for the Kepler space telescope's "K2" mission, the Earth was going to be in the field of view for a few days in January! Erin Ryan and I petitioned NASA (i.e. wrote an observing proposal) for them to capture this moment as an iconic image that symbolizes the entire Kepler mission. Though we weren't funded, NASA agreed to take the image!

For you data nerds out there, you can play with this image too. Warning: the entire image is over 400mb (it's a monster digital camera), and it's still in a very raw form. The Kepler GO office put a smaller file up here, which only contains the channel with the Earth on it, and Geert Barentsen tweeted how to make your own version of the image in Python!

I have a TON more to say about this image, what it means to me personally, why it's technically interesting, and why I think it's valuable... but for now, here's another installment of my Astro Vlog featuring the Kepler Selfie:



If you're digging these videos showing life as an astronomer, be sure to support me and subscribe on YouTube! I have a LOT of science trips planed this spring/summer, and am looking forward to bringing my camera (and you all) along for the ride.

The Dream of Spaceflight

Me and fellow member of team "Gagarin", at Space Camp (Huntsville, AL) circa 2001

This past Friday during a test flight over the Mojave desert the privately funded SpaceShipTwo crashed, killing one test pilot and severely injuring another. Combined with the destruction of a privately built Antares rocket during launch (thankfully nobody injured), it's been a hard week for the business of space.

Some worry these two accidents have been a damning setback to the dream. Here the dream I'm referring to is making space travel common, available to everyone. And to be clear, it's a LONG ways off... Currently it costs between $1 and $10 per lb to fly on commercial airlines (of course, we don't buy tickets by the lb, but its a round number). By comparison, launching something in to space is over 1000X more expensive, around $10,000 per lb. When private companies are able to make spaceflight an everyday reality, we'll be a lot closer to this dream.

Around 540 people have flown in space (and perhaps a few more if you believe militaries have flown secret missions). That's it! Fewer than 600 humans have ever left our world. Given that the World population is still increasing, I wondered:  Has the number of people who have flown in to space actually kept up with population growth?

In other words, even though it's insanely expensive to launch people, and very few have been fortunate enough to go, are we making any progress on the dream?