Astronaut Don Pettit Creates the First Mailing Address in Space

By Clay Dillow Posted 05.17.2012 at 1:32 pm 6 Comments

Don Pettit Plays Angry Birds in Space NASA

The International Space Station is in constant motion, whipping around the Earth at some 17,000 miles per hour. But according to current ISS inhabitant and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, there’s no reason why a bullet-fast orbital space station with no fixed location shouldn’t have a fixed mailing address--after all, Navy ships have mailing addresses, as do remote outposts like McMurdo Station in Antarctica--and he’s devised just such a postal nomenclature to satisfy this need via his NASA blog.

My sleep station, a coffin-sized box, is located in the fifth deck space of Node 2. From an Earth-based perspective, I pop out of my sleep station as if I were coming out of the floor. I am thus situated on the International Space Station (ISS) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees (the angle of our orbit plane to the equator) and an average altitude of 400 kilometers. It occurred to me that my address should be: Node 2, Deck 5, ISS, LEO 51.603.

In this system, the “zip code” is 51.603, the first three digits representing the orbital inclination (which should help future space couriers locate the address on orbit) and the last two digits being a designator for the ISS itself. The station is the third such space station at this orbital location, after the Salyut series of stations and Mir. Pettit reasons that this nomenclature should work until the orbit becomes clogged with up to 99 space stations.

Postage rates, however, are likely going to be astronomical.

[NASA Blogs]

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6 Comments

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Cookiees453

05/17/12 at 4:54 pm

"Postage rates, however, are likely going to be astronomical."

Lol

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Robot

05/17/12 at 6:06 pm

He really feels his address should be that detailed? As if it may get delivered to the wrong orbiting space station! How many of those things do we have up there anyways?

We have only one ISS, alright then.

He must really want his NetFlix DVD really readlly bad, lol.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

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RawrEllie

05/18/12 at 10:02 am

I think this is rather useless.. Why would anyone want to send letters to space I mean.. Just send an email.. It's free.

But still interesting..

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Volt

05/24/12 at 3:51 am

Worthless but funny idea now. Hopefully useful in the future.

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howaboutit

09/07/12 at 9:23 pm

Can you give us any tecnical details of rendevous of a crewed spacecraft with the station? I would like to get more pictures and comments from the astronauts of the views of the stars, moon and other objects where being above the atmosphere mihgt make a difference besides Earth. howaboutit okay?

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howaboutit

09/09/12 at 4:34 pm

I want breakthrough propulsion physics to grow in N.A.S.A.'s priorities.

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