Where is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) headed to? News stories describe it in various levels of detail: a million miles beyond the Earth, a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. Say what? As long ago as 1736,…
Year: 2021
THE GEMINIDS
I was really happy that so many of my Lynchburg area friends were able to experience clear skies for the Geminid meteor shower. I dressed warmly, put my chair in the shadow of our car to block our neighborhood’s brightest…
The Nature of Science
This is an unusual post for StarStruck. Only one image, and that one more than 400 years old, and no videos. This is a speech I gave to Lynchburg College’s (now the University of Lynchburg) Senior Symposium class in 2010.…
Hockey Team or Clever Orbit?
Molniya orbit. Sounds like the name of a Russian ice hockey team, doesn’t it? It’s actually a clever Russian solution to the problem of providing satellite communication coverage to far northern latitudes. Do you have a satellite dish for your…
Not 100% True
The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, but a little observation of the sky can demonstrate that common sayings such as this may be only partially true. In the Northern Hemisphere, at least if we…
Gas Station on Mars
This Thursday February 18th at 3:55 p.m. EST, the Mars Perseverance rover will either land in a crater on Mars—or perhaps create a new one. The “seven minutes of terror” involves a complex sequence of timed events to take a…
Invasion From Earth!
Three spacecraft launched last summer will all arrive at Mars soon. The first is the United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission, which will begin firing its rocket engine to go into Mars orbit at 10:30 a.m. EST on Tuesday, February 9th.…
Rocket Science–Real and Imagined
Every science fiction show that has its protagonists zipping around the solar system and traveling from one planet to another in a few days or weeks instead of months or years requires some fictional propulsion system. Star Trek of course…
Rocket Science For Real
“Rocket Science” is often used to describe something that is incredibly complex and difficult to understand, something that only people of superior intelligence can grasp. Actually, while the engineering skills required to make a rocket that does its job efficiently…
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