goddard

11.21.09

NASA Shoots Laser From Maryland to Hit the LRO Spacecraft, 250,000 Miles Away

By Clay Dillow Posted 09.24.2009 at 3:30 pm 10 Comments

Nice Shot: NASA Goddard's Laser Ranging Facility hits the LRO in stride 28 times per second across a quarter million miles of space. Tom Zagwodzki/Goddard Space Flight Center

Fancy yourself a sharpshooter at laser tag? The team at Goddard Space Flight Center might just have you beat. After all, since launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they've been firing a laser across 250,000 miles of space, hitting the minivan-sized LRO as it orbits the moon at nearly 3,600 miles per hour. It's no lucky shot either; they do it 28 times per second.

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READ MORE ABOUT > astronomy, goddard, laser, laser range finder, lro, moon, nasa, space

New York Times to NASA: You're Right, Rockets DO Work in Space

By Bjorn Carey Posted 07.20.2009 at 6:29 pm 4 Comments

On the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, it seems like every news outlet worth its weight in regolith is reproducing classic content to put the historic moment in the proper content. Well, here’s one Apollo-related news item, printed on July 17th, as Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins were well on their way to the Moon, that I doubt the New York Times wants to draw much attention to today: a retraction of a 1920 article which stated rocket motors couldn't work in the vacuum of space, almost fifty years after the fact.

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READ MORE ABOUT > Apollo, apollo +40, apollo 11, goddard, rockets, space

Up and Away

In the latest bid to rocket tourists into orbit, the secretive Blue Origin unveils a flying pod. Is your space voyage sooner than you think?

By Michael Stroh Posted 03.14.2007 at 1:00 am 0 Comments

A mere three years after Burt Rutan´s SpaceShipOne skimmed the edge of space to capture the $10-million Ansari X Prize, more than half a dozen companies are furiously building and testing spacecraft designed to take paying passengers on suborbital journeys and beyond.

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