Mickes space

tisdag 23 juni 2015

Capturing The Night- Photography by Greg Gibbs.

The Florida runway where space shuttles touched down for nearly 30 years has a new mission

Space Florida intends to offer the Shuttle Landing Facility as a testing ground for new technologies and companies, including unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems and a new generation of horizontal-launch space vehicles.
The Air Force has also stated it intends to use the runway to land its uncrewed X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, beginning possibly with the end of the mini-shuttle's current mission, which launched in May.
Completed in 1976, the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) was first used to land a space shuttle eight years later on Feb. 11, 1984, when the orbiter Challenger returned to Earth to complete the STS-41B mission. That flight marked the first time that a spacecraft had landed at its launch site.
"We made a big thing out of it back then, that it was going to be the first [landing] at the Cape [Cape Canaveral]," said astronaut Vance Brand, who as commander was at Challenger's controls, in a 2002 NASA interview. "The Cape was a beautiful place to land, and we were very happy to get to be the first guys to do it."
In the 27 years that followed, 77 shuttle missions touched down on the runway, which was designated either 15 or 33 depending on the approach. The last orbiter to touch down on the SLF was Atlantis on the final shuttle mission, STS-135, on July 21, 2011.

Sentinel-2A liftoff.

Replay of the Sentinel-2A liftoff on a Vega launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 23 June 2015.

Sentinel-2A is the second satellite to be launched for Europe’s Copernicus environment monitoring programme.

Designed as a two-satellite constellation – Sentinel-2A and -2B – the Sentinel-2 mission carries an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands for a new perspective of our land and vegetation. This information will be used for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage food security. It will also provide information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters. Images of floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides contribute to disaster mapping and help humanitarian relief efforts.