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Bad Astronomy
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Cool NASA video

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.

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January 17th, 2007 7:49 PM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Cool stuff, NASA, Science, Time Sink | 11 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

11 Responses to “Cool NASA video”

  1. 1.   ioresult Says:
    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

  2. 2.   Geoff Says:
    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)

  3. 3.   Geoff Says:
    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)

  4. 4.   Gary Ansorge Says:
    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

  5. 5.   RyanG Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    This video is begging for the Blue Danube.

  6. 6.   jasonB Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

    B.A.

    Is that trip 100% necessary? Is that keeping your carbon footprint minimized?

  7. 7.   Donnie B. Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    Ahhh! It’s the langoliers!

    Oh wait… no teeth. Whew.

  8. 8.   GregD Says:
    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.

  9. 9.   Nigel Depledge Says:
    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”…

  10. 10.   Harald Says:
    January 21st, 2007 at 3:22 pm

    There were flyby sounds as well as satellites passed the “camera”.

  11. 11.   Vassilis Angelopoulos Says:
    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? :)

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