About this time of the morning, back in 1985, I would be on the bus to another day in Year 7.
If we were lucky we might get to use a computer today, but that rarely happened in year 7. I may have been aware of another space shuttle mission happening/about to happen and I always enjoyed seeing any footage available of those that the news showed in the evening.*
This morning, as I caught the bus into work, I watched a live stream of SpaceX launching the NASA TESS mission on my phone.
Still a diesel smelling, bumpy ride (although a nicer bus than the old Volvo's that would take me to school) but today I could spend some of it holding a small, wireless device and watch live as a cheap, reusable (mostly) rocket took a NASA mission into orbit and then successfully landed the reusable stage. That was the 24th successful landing, so I'd say they've got that pretty much worked out.
The TESS mission is cool as well. Despite the Star Wars inspired certainty that year 7 me would have told you that there are planets around other stars, none had been confirmed at that time. There are now over 3800+ exoplanets confirmed, and the TESS mission is going to survey about 90% of the sky (although not as deep as other surveys) and will definitely add many more to that number. Awesome.
*I checked, and on this day 35 years ago the shuttle was just finishing a mission to deploy a communication satellite and do some other work and would land on the 20th April Australian time.
Screen snaps!
If we were lucky we might get to use a computer today, but that rarely happened in year 7. I may have been aware of another space shuttle mission happening/about to happen and I always enjoyed seeing any footage available of those that the news showed in the evening.*
This morning, as I caught the bus into work, I watched a live stream of SpaceX launching the NASA TESS mission on my phone.
Still a diesel smelling, bumpy ride (although a nicer bus than the old Volvo's that would take me to school) but today I could spend some of it holding a small, wireless device and watch live as a cheap, reusable (mostly) rocket took a NASA mission into orbit and then successfully landed the reusable stage. That was the 24th successful landing, so I'd say they've got that pretty much worked out.
The TESS mission is cool as well. Despite the Star Wars inspired certainty that year 7 me would have told you that there are planets around other stars, none had been confirmed at that time. There are now over 3800+ exoplanets confirmed, and the TESS mission is going to survey about 90% of the sky (although not as deep as other surveys) and will definitely add many more to that number. Awesome.
*I checked, and on this day 35 years ago the shuttle was just finishing a mission to deploy a communication satellite and do some other work and would land on the 20th April Australian time.
Screen snaps!
