Last week, our last host shared some awesome #Skylab history. Here’s some amazing shots of #Earth, as seen by the final Skylab crew.
Here’s a thread with some incredible pics, taken May to June 1973 by the crew of Skylab III. Or 4 but that’s a topic for @NASA_Skylab to answer.
1st up, New England “stretching from northern Long Island across the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island & Massachusetts. The total area covered by this photo is more than 25,000 square miles & includes all of Rhode Island, most of Massachusetts & Connecticut, part of New York.”
Next, SD- The Badlands formed over millions of years. Beautiful “steep gullies, irregular winding ridges & isolated buttes. The barren wasteland of badlands light toned rock surfaces contrast sharply w/ the adjacent vegetated landscape of native grasslands & cultivated fields.”
Where it started- Cape Canaveral & @NASAKennedy from Space. “Sprinkled along the jutting cape are a number of KSC launch pads from the earlier Mercury, Gemini Apollo and Skylab” & Shuttle flights. Now, @ulalaunch & @SpaceX launch spacecraft & humans from these sites! #space
Having lived in South Dakota for a while, I can attest to the barren beauty of parts of the state. Here’s a picture of the Black Hills. “Cities and towns in this view include: Rapid City, Deadwood, and Belle Fourche with the nearby Belle Fourche Reservoir.” #Earth#space#orbit
The Ohio River snakes it’s way through Illinois and Kentucky. I love the contrast of the brown river water, the fields from agriculture, the trees. I’d never get any work done in #space because I’d be looking out the window 24/7.
One last Skylab picture of home for tonight, the Colorado/Utah border. “The Green River and the Colorado River flow southward to join (off scene) before flowing through the Grand Canyon National Park.” #space
All pics and captions for tonight- @NASA
And it was Skylab II (or 3) not the final mission. I didn’t get enough coffee last night!
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PEOPLE OF SPACE! I’m super excited to be hosting this week! We’ll be covering a bunch of topics that are near and dear to me including #space (obviously), astronomy, supernovae, radio astronomy, science communication, and MORE
🧵 #science#scicomm#spacetwitter#intro#Thread
But who is this random dude yelling at us about space?
Well the short version is that I’m a physicist who finished high school with every intention of becoming a lawyer - pictured is 19yo me not caring about science #accidentalscientist#accidentalphysicist#throwback#SPACE
The mission patch was based on a design from well known Italian fashion designer, Emilio Pucci. The design has three stylized birds flying over the Hadley-Appenine landing site with the crew names on the lower part of the outer border.
In an early version of an Easter egg, the crew snuck a Roman numeral XV into the crater shadows. According to a story I heard from one of Al Worden's @ExploreSpaceKSC presentations, NASA discouraged Roman numerals on the Apollo patches, thus the hidden nature.
Before his passing last year, @WordenAlfred was a regular astronaut host at @ExploreSpaceKSC giving presentations guiding tours and being an affable ambassador of the Apollo program to a new audience.
On board were (left to right) Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin, Commander Dave Scott, and Command Module Pilot Al Worden
The landing site was Hadley-Appenine, on the edge of Mare Imbrium. It was bordered by Hadley Rille, a valley-like geological structure and the Montes Apenninus, or Appenine Mountains. The Palus Putredinus was a lava field that filled the area.
Today I’ll be working on some research for the big Mars exhibition! As I said yesterday, I’m working on researching how people have been imaging the Red Planet throughout history.
Today we have orbiters circling Mars and rovers that take pictures of the surface. But the history of imaging Mars stretches back centuries, from depicting Mars in art to the canals people thought they saw on the planet.
What are some of your favourite images of Mars and why?
Going to talk about designing a temporary display today!
In Science Museum lingo, there are 2 kinds of displays:
🚀Exhibitions (temporary displays) - these can last up to a year
🚀Galleries (permanent displays)
Even a temporary display might take several years to prepare for, with overviews and detailed proposals.
Exotic solvents & life's building blocks are among the more speculative #astrobiology topics, but still important to study scientifically! Our own system contains places potentially able to host life unlike on Earth. Not just Titan!
All Earth life is carbon-based and needs water to survive. 💦
'Mildly' exotic life might share these traits, but use e.g. other information molecule (or differently coded DNA, even with different/more 'letters') or opposite chirality (left/right-handedness) of some compounds.
There are countless possibilities of different information molecules and their coding. Is Earth DNA and RNA a ', frozen accident', or does it have a phys/chem reason? And is all life chiral? In the same way, or is that another frozen accident? What about the amino acids we use?