International Spaceflight Museum

Thanks to ISM visitor KikoHunniton, a new video of the ISM has been posted to CNN’s iReport site. Click on that link to read the article, and enjoy the video here:

One of our active members, Mike Goerisch, has just posted a truly excellent article in his blog with a spot-on, entertaining description of the ISM. Do have a look.

In the top picture from left to right, Planners Gamel Goodfellow, Becka Finesmith, Paradox Olbers, Kat Lemieux, Marcus Olbracht,  Arisia Vita, and Opal Lei look at the central area honoring Kirra Ball’s donation of the Spaceport Bravo sim to the ISM.

ISM Planners looking at this Opal Lei prototype

The Bravo! Donors Monument atop the VAB

 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/167/193/89  is the permanent home of the Donors’ Monument now, down on the lower roof below and to the right of the American flag.  More iterations will produce the final design.

On the 22^nd October, the Indian moon probe Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft launched from a southern Indian launch pad. Aboard it is a special camera, called an X-ray spectrometer (C1XS). This camera was developed in the UK at the Rutherford Appleton Laboroatory in Oxfordshire . The samples of the moon collected by the Apollo missions only tell us what the surface composition is like in a few places. It is like deducing the surface composition of the Earth by sampling soil in Boise, Idaho, Manchester England and Bhopal, India!  

PSLV on the way to the launch pad (Photo: ESA/ISRO).

The Indian probe will orbit the Moon and gather information about it’s surface, including its composition, using C1XS. Of particular interest is the level of Magnesium it will find on the surface. This would be a good indicator of whether the moons surface was Molten at some time in its life (Magnesium would float to the surface). The ratios of Iron to Magnesium will also indicate its post molten history.

In addition to C1XS, other instruments will map the moons magnetic anomolies, produce 3 dimensional maps of the surface and drop a probe that will impact in the surface. The probe carries a video camera, mass spectrometer and and an altimeter. It will produce images of the decent along with data about the atmospheric composition of the moon as it plummets towards the surface.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched using a modified version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle , A model of this vehicle is included at the ISM.

CyRos Captain Cypress Rosewood playing at the helm

Cypress demonstrates his musicianShip, dressed for the occasion.  His 3rd ISM concert is the first of a monthly series – practically speaking since Cypress does real life tours too, it will be 8 or so concerts a year.

 30 avatars enjoyed Cypress’s return to the ISS exhibit high above both the world and Spaceport Alpha.

Space shuttle Endevour linked to the ISS at ISM

The full set of concert snaps are at flickr.

Today (29th September 2008), after a successful first mission, the Jules Verne freighter (also known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle – ATV), will fire its engines on two separate occasions to decay its current orbit and plunge towards the Pacific Ocean. On board, months of trash from the International Space Station. 4 more missions are currently planned for the $1bn price tag freight container. No one is really sure how much of the spacecraft will reach the Pacific ocean. Most of it should burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere at a whopping 27,360 km/h. There is a small chance though that the craft will reach the ocean, although in pieces. For this reason, an exclusion zone for air and sea traffic has been put around the possible landing area. A model of the ATV is on show at the ISM and a copy of the model is available for purchase in the ISM gift shop.

[Here's one YouTube vid of the spectacular reentry firestreak

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=bvfANdWKJio&feature=PlayList&p=8330EFB431CFDF08&index=3 ]

-Paradox

The past few weeks have seen quite a bit of activity in the background, and soon some of it will become obvious on this site as well.

Paradox Olbers (SL name) has taken on the day-to-day operational leadership of the ISM planning group in Second Life, and was elected to the ISM Corporation’s board of directors.

This website will have a new look soon, as well as a new “landing page”, so you won’t be immediately on this blog page in future, but will need to either navigate here or use a longer URL. If you’d like a preview or want to watch the work in progress, go here. You can leave comments about the new page design on this post if you like.

The new exhibit info wiki is acquiring translations into a number of languages, thanks to friends of Becka, who has been contributing articles to this blog as well. We will be adding more research results to that wiki as time goes on, too.

There is more in the works, but we’ll wait till the other things are closer to reality before mentioning them here. Congratulations (and thanks) to Paradox, and to all the planning group members who are working hard to help make the best museum in Second Life become even better!

I’m so lucky. I live in a town that has a long history in Space flight. In fact, for as long as I can remember, Stevenage in Hertfordshire, UK has had pioneering companies involved in space related activities. The first was British Aerospace and now EADS Astrium. Astrium have been involved in a long line of groundbreaking missions including many built (but maybe not assembled) in Stevenage. The Beagle 2 and the Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne (ATV), to name two well known examples. The latter is a recent addition to the existing exhibits in the ISM and a model is available from the ISM gift shop. Now, ESA are proposing a sample return mission to a near Earth object. The mission has been named Marco Polo and Astrium have been appointed the prime contractor.  What’s more, the mission is a collaboration with the Japanese Space Agency JAXA, a potent mix of expertise. The proposed launch vehicle will be a Soyuz rocket, another ISM exhibit.

So when someone asks you where all those ESA space missions are built. You can now tell them Stevenage in Hertfordshire, UK. It’s where all the great European space stuff really goes on!

The ISM truly deserves to include the word “International” in its title. For example, in a few days time, China will launch it’s 3rd manned space flight and will include a space walk for the first time. The Shenzhou 7 mission will firmly put China on the map as world class player in the manned spaceflight arena. What’s more, China is so confident of the success of the mission that they have agreed to broadcast live for the whole world to see. If a fraction of the expertise shown by them in organising the recent Olympics is evident, it will be a spectacular event. The fireworks of the opening ceremony will be equalled by the awesome launch of the Long March 2F Rocket.

You haven’t seen the rocket?  Well then you better take a fresh look at the ISM. All the Chang Zheng [Long March] rockets, including the Long March 2F (known as CZ-2F) are on display. You could also be a part of the history by sponsoring one of them!  Want a taste of what it will be like?  Watch the launch of Shenzhou 7.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX-iGLG0gE4

Longtime ISM member Opal Lei has started a new wiki for the museum, which we plan to use to document our exhibits. Instead of using notecards, which are somewhat limited and inconvenient (filling up visitors’ inventories), we will create weblinks to the appropriate wiki page, to be opened in the visitors’ web browser.

As well as avoiding notecard spam, the web-based wiki enables us to conveniently offer the information in more languages than before. Some of our notecards have been translated into Spanish and French, but we have hopes that in future we can have versions in Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Hindi and Arabic. All we need are translators, and in fact have been told there are some people willing and able to help with some of these languages now. There is a lot of work to do, basic research as well as translations, so we’d be happy to hear from anyone interested in volunteering their time and abilities in this area. The wiki will not only be the repository for such research/translations, it can help us keep track of which exhibits need documentation. So, thanks again, Opal, for another great contribution to the ISM!