On Thursday I am off to The Amaz!ng Meeting! So in the meantime, watch this way cool video put together by the folks of NASA, depicting the launch of the THEMIS satellites. My friend Rani Gran from Goddard Space Flight Center told me about it. It was created by Walt Feimer and Stefanie Misztal.










January 18th, 2007 at 6:20 am
I’m confused: why did they name two completely different things with the same name?
http://themis.asu.edu/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html
January 18th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Thanks Phil,
Human ingenuity at work.
Wiki has a good piece on THEMIS here for those who are curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THEMIS_(satellite)
January 18th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Note: The url didn’t completely work so you’ll have to copy and paste to add the (satellite)
January 18th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Video. Cool!
Now, all we need is a close view of a space colony being constructed,,,
GAry 7
January 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am
This video is begging for the Blue Danube.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
B.A.
Is that trip 100% necessary? Is that keeping your carbon footprint minimized?
January 18th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Ahhh! It’s the langoliers!
Oh wait… no teeth. Whew.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:41 am
I could be mistaken, but is there a rumble sound everytime one of the rockets fires? Shouldn’t NASA know better?
I also think the Blue Danube is called for.
January 19th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
GregD, I also heard sound effects after the vehicle had left the atmosphere. There must be a website somewhere to discuss such bad astronomy as “sound in space”…
January 21st, 2007 at 3:22 pm
There were flyby sounds as well as satellites passed the “camera”.
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Hi folks
This is Vassilis Angelopoulos; I am the principal investigator
for the THEMIS/MIDEX mission, so I am the recipient of the
wrath regarding the “lack of ingenuity, why same names for
two NASA programs”. You are right, we did struggle with this
befitting name for the mission - justice from data - and the
potential conflict with other users of the name, and realized
that the possibility for confusion is minimal. There is indeed an
instrument on another mission called “THEMIS” but it was not
considered a problem as it goes on another planet. The THEMIS
mission goes by: THEMIS/MIDEX mission, whereas the instrument
is known as the Mars Odyssey/THEMIS instrument. It would be
really cool (scientifically) to have a multi-spacecraft mission
on Mars, but for that we’ll pick another name. Maybe the
Amazones, from Ares’ daughters?