TechBloggin.com

Filed under: Transportation

Remember Space Exploration Technologies Corp, otherwise known as SpaceX? You know, the private space transport company started by PayPal founder Elon Musk that won the NASA Commercial Comercial Orbital Transportation Services competition for its Falcon rocket? Last we heard from SpaceX it had lost Falcon 1 during a test launch, but this week its Falcon 9 launch vehicle was successfully fired up. While it didn’t go anywhere, the successful static launch was good news for the company, and the test run was even two months ahead of schedule, which could mean good things for the rockets’ ultimate place in runs to the International Space Station once the Space Shuttle goes out of service in 2010.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Joshua Fruhlinger

written by

Filed under: Storage

Although it’s been several years since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, it looks like some of the data gathered during the orbiter’s final mission will be put to good use. A hard drive salvaged from the wreckage contains the results of an experiment to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity, and the results were published in the April edition of a journal called Physical Review E. The 400MB Seagate drive was originally thought to be destroyed, but workers and engineers reconstructing the orbiter from the remaining debris found it during the process and sent it off for recovery, where 99 percent of the data was extracted. It then took several years for lead researcher Robert Berg and his team to analyze the findings, but they’re happy with the results — we only wish they hadn’t come at so dear a price.

[Thanks, Laura]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Nilay Patel

written by

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Transportation

As NASA awaits the newly rescheduled launch of its latest mission, Microsoft has been busy creating a “3D montage” of the space shuttle Endeavour. According to the team, this venture will enable individuals around the globe to “view 3D images of Endeavour and surrounding buildings at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it launches into space.” The environments are being constructed using hundreds of snapshots and an imaging technology dubbed Photosynth, which stitches together 2D digital images to give a three-dimensional view “that can be navigated and explored in a highly intuitive manner.” This go ’round, it seems that the goal was simply to provide a wow-factor to remote onlookers, but both entities are reportedly “looking into ways of using this new technology to support future missions.” Check out the results here.

[Via PCWorld]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

---

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Source: Darren Murph

written by