Astronaut Piers Sellers on Danny Baker

British astronaut, Piers Sellers was on the Danny Baker podcast this week. It was a fascinating interview. This is one of the guys who assembled the ISS in orbit while spacewalking. It was fascinating to hear him talk about his experiences and I found it amazing how down to earth (pun intended) he was. There was no arrogance and the conversation flowed freely and easily between them. I recommend you listen to it while it’s still available. I’m going to listen to it again.

Voyager: To The Final Frontier

I watched Voyager: To The Final Frontier on iPlayer this morning. It’s not available online anymore, just clips of it at the link above. I’d got it stacked up in my backlog of things I hadn’t watched yet. It was another great programme from the BBC. Voyager 2 is in the news again as it’s about to leave the Solar System. It is incredible to think this piece of 70s technology is still going and still sending back valid data. It was interesting to see how Voyager’s technology has remained the same while back here on Earth the equipment that it talks to has changed massively.
It’s caused me to read Murmurs of Earth by Carl Sagan (and others) that I picked up in a second hand bookshop recently. It’s all about the Voyager Golden Record that was mounted on the Voyager space probes. It’s purpose was partly a message in a bottle in the incredibly unlikely ever another civilisation found it, and partly to celebrate the achievements of our civilisation and cultures.

Neil Armstrong – the real Astro Ukenaut

Neil Armstrong played the ukulele.

The original Astro Ukenaut.

Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars

I was awake early this morning to watch the Curiosity Rover landing on Mars. You could really sense the tension in the JPL mission control as it went through the EDL (entry, descent, landing) stages. I shared some of their elation when it landed and the first thumbnail images came through. The whole sequence is probably available to watch again on NASA TV but here’s the final stages on YouTube.

BBC Horizon – Mission to Mars, Curiosity Rover

Watched a great BBC Horizon programme about the Mars Mission to land the Curiosity Rover on 6 August. It’s available on the iPlayer.

Martian sunset as seen from the previous Spirit Rover mission.

Curiosity lands at 06:31 on Monday 6 Aug (BST). What’s amazing is, that at that distance it takes 14 minutes to communicate with it, but the landing sequence, which includes a real sci-fi sky crane takes only 7 minutes. It has to be done autonomously.

I’m following @MarsCuriosity on Twitter.