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Astronaut Diary Survives Columbia Accident

Page from Ilan Ramon's diary. Credit: Israel Museum

Page from Ilan Ramon's diary. Credit: Israel Museum


Pages from an astronaut's diary survived the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, and on Sunday, selected pages went on display at a museum in Jerusalem. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon kept a personal diary during his time in orbit, and portions of it were found about two months after Columbia broke apart on February 1, 2003 while returning to Earth following the STS-107 mission. "Today was the first day that I felt that I am truly living in space. I have become a man who lives and works in space," Ramon wrote in an entry on his sixth day in orbit.

Astronaut Ilan Ramon departs for his flight aboard Columbia. Credit: Chris O’Meara/Associated Press

Astronaut Ilan Ramon departs for his flight aboard Columbia. Credit: Chris O’Meara/Associated Press


37 pages survived the extreme heat of the explosion, as well as the 60 km (37-mile) fall to earth and several days of wet weather before they were found. "It's almost a miracle that it survived — it's incredible," Israel Museum curator Yigal Zalmona said. "There is no rational explanation for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not."
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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October 8, 2008
To the moon, Alice!
Posted: 11:19 AM ET

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/

Two more teams have signed up for the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

To win the $20 million grand prize, a team must soft-land its spacecraft on the Moon, rove at least 500 meters, and transmit video, images and data back to Earth (according to a specific set of parameters). All funding must be private. The deadline is December 31, 2012 — after that the grand prize drops to $15 million. If no one wins by December 31, 2014, the competition ends. (Unless they extend it…)

The two new entrants bring to 14 the total number of teams in the competition. The others include:

  • Odyssey Moon: Isle of Man-based team, working on a spacecraft called “MoonOne (M-1)”
  • Astrobotic: U.S. team lead by Carnegie Mellon University robotics guru “Red” Whittaker; the lander will be called “Artemis” and the rover “Red Rover”
  • Team Italia: Italy-based, obviously, spacecraft will be called “AMALIA”
  • Micro-Space: U.S. team
  • FREDNET: A multinational team, taking a 100% open-source approach
  • ARCA: The acronym stands for Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association; spacecraft will be called the European Lunar Explorer, or “ELE”
  • LunaTrex: U.S. team, working on a spacecraft called “Tumbleweed”
  • Chandah: U.S. team, “Chandah” means “Moon” in Sanskrit; spacecraft will be called “Shehrezade”
  • Advaeros: Another Malaysian team; spacecraft will be called “Picard”
  • STELLAR: U.S. team, includes members from Insight Technologies, the Advanced Vehicle Research Center, and North Carolina State University; spacecraft will be called the “Stellar Eagle”
  • JURBAN: U.S. team sponsored by a research group called Juxtopia; spacecraft will be called “JOLHT”
  • And one Mystery Team (teams may remain anonymous until July 20, 2009)

If this all seems too, ahem, “pie-in-the-sky,” remember that Burt Rutan (with backing from Microsoft’s Paul Allen) won the $10 million dollar Ansari X PRIZE back in 2004 for private suborbital spaceflight. Big feats CAN be accomplished on a relative shoestring. It will be fun to watch and see if one of these groups can win big.

–Kate Tobin, Sr. Producer, CNN Science & Technology

Filed under: Google Lunar X PRIZE • Moon • Space