Collaborate Disseminate
Human spaceflight has always been, and still remains, a risky endeavor. We mitigate risk by being as prepared as we can. Every activity is planned, reviewed, and practiced long before any rocket engines are ignited. But space has a history of not cooperating with plans, and thus there is a …read more
Continue reading Short Video Recaps A Long Tradition of Space Hacks
The Apollo missions still inspire people today, decades after they took place. A fortunate side effect of the global public relations campaign is that a lot of information is publicly available for us to review and process. We’re right around the 19th anniversary of Apollo 14 mission, so it was …read more
Continue reading Deploy Workaround Code To The Field When “The Field” Is Lunar Orbit
“Big Bertha,” a lunar rock that was picked up by Apollo 14 astronauts, originated on Earth 4.1 billion years ago, according to a new study. Continue reading How an Ancient Rock Carrying Earth’s Oldest Known Crystals Ended Up on the Moon
The most computationally intense part of an Apollo mission was the moon landing itself, requiring both real-time control and navigation of the Lunar Module (LM) through a sequence of programs known as the P60’s. Data from radar, inertial navigation, and optical data sighted-off by the LM commander himself were fed into the computer in what we’d call today ‘data fusion.’
The guy who wrote that code is Don Eyles and the next best thing to actually hanging out with Don is to read his book. Don’s book reads as if you are at a bar sitting across the table listening …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: Sunburst and Luminary, an Apollo Memoir
Deep-voiced and aptly named [Scott Manley] posted a video about the computer hack that saved Apollo 14. Unlike some articles about the incident, [Scott] gets into the technical details in an entertaining way. If you don’t remember, Apollo 14 had an issue where the abort command button would occasionally signal when it shouldn’t.
The common story is that a NASA engineer found a way to reprogram the Apollo guidance computer. However, [Scott] points out that the rope memory in the computer wasn’t reprogrammable and there was no remote way to send commands to the computer anyway.
The initial patch had …read more
Continue reading The Longest Tech Support Call: Apollo 14 Computer Hack
‘LOOK AT THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH’ reads a suborbital tweet paraphrasing Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Continue reading This Indie Space Network Launched the ‘First Protest in Space’ Targeting Trump