Rhea, Dione and Saturn's rings by Cassini. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Time for a stuff post or at least a mini stuff post.

Aurora – keep an eye on the K index as night falls.  The K-index has hit 5 today and as you know that could mean there is a possibility of seeing an aurora if you live at sufficiently high latitudes.  Remember last week I mentioned the possibility?  It had clouded up so I wasn’t able to see anything BUT there was a nice video released by the Solar Dynamic Observatory of the flare causing the ruckus.  See it here.

Out for a walk – The Discovery space-walkers spent six-hours and 34 minutes outside the spacecraft and ISS.  Mission specialists Steve Bowen and Al Drew moved a failed ammonia pump module installed an extension cable, extended the rail track along the station’s main truss and installed a camera wedge among other things.  There was a minor glitch caused by a problem with the robotic arm controls in the cupola.  Things got back to normal with the operators of the Canadarm2, Mission Specialist Michael Barratt and station Commander Scott Kelly moved to a duplicate control center in the Destiny Laboratory.

Message in a Bottle – Before the spacewalk ended Bowen and Drew opened a metal canister. The goal was simple use the metal canister to capture a bit of the vacuum of space.  The canister which was autographed by astronauts will be returned on Discover for display.

Dawn and Messenger – both spacecraft are getting closer to their targets but more on that later.

Cassini – Cassini is still out there and I really like the image above.  The image is looking beneath the heavily cratered southern portion of Saturn’s moon Rhea from the opposite side of the moon facing Saturn and toward the wispy moon Dione which is facing Saturn.  Dione appears to be sitting on Saturn’s rings, in reality the moon is beyond the rings.

And finally!!!!!

DON’T FORGET TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GLOBE AT NIGHT PROJECT – CLICK TO FIND OUT HOW, GO ON  AND DO IT!