The National Space Council is apparently not from a Science Fiction show

February 20^th Vice President Pence returned to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida. He took to the podium to head a meeting of the newly re-established National Space Council.  

Back in July, Vice President Pence visited the space center to speak to the employees about the on-going programs. He also toured facilities that hosts the programs.

During this visit, he toured Kennedy Space Center once more as well as the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. He also participated in the reception hosted by the Aerospace Industry.

The main focus for this meeting was for the Vice President to host the second meeting of National Space Council. This meeting was held in Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing facility. This meeting was to emphasize the importance of the United Station’s missions into space. The meeting went into detail about the United States being the worlds leader when it came down to space exploration. The theme of the meeting was titled, “Moon, Mars and the World Beyond: Winning the Next Frontier”. It included speakers that are leaders in commercial, civil and security sectors of space exploration.

The National Space Council’s role is to advise the President of the best strategies for the country’s space policies and to review the nations goals for space travel. The members include people in civil and military space programs.

President Trump has given the agency a budget $19.9 billion and has directed NASA to extend it exploration to the outer reaches of our solar system.

Pluto: Planet or Ice Rock?

What actually is Pluto?

Some say it's a planet, some say it's nothing.

NASA states that Pluto is a dwarf planet. It travels and orbits the sun just like other planets. But unlike the other planets, it is much smaller than the others. The planet is about half the size of the United States and smaller than the Earth's moon. The planet takes about 248 Earth years to go around the sun. A day on Pluto is six and a half days on Earth.

Pluto is in a part of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt. A region of the solar system that is outside the orbit of Neptune. It holds, what is to be believed comets, asteroids and other small objects and bodies that are mainly made of ice. Like Pluto.

NASA is constantly exploring the solar system and beyond because people love to learn new things. The agency couldn't get a picture using Hubble that wasn't blurry. So, they sent a a telescope the size of a small piano to take pictures of the dwarf planet. New Horizon's is its name. The telescope launched in January of 2006, and got to the planet in Summer 2015 and took some fantastic pictures.

From these pictures, NASA discovered that Pluto is more rock than ice! They also discovered that the moons of the planet spin faster than all other moons. The moon Hydra spins 90 times every time is orbits Pluto.

LIFTOFF!

One of the biggest news stories this week is Falcon Heavy. Launching from famous platform 39A, which launched the Apollo moon missions as well as the shuttle missions, Falcon Heavy went down in history as the most powerful rocket ever.

Kennedy Space Center was lined with traffic as eager Floridians got ready for the launch. Falcon Heavy lifted off on Tuesday February 6th almost perfectly. This rocket is the only rocket since the Saturn V (the one who sent humans to the moon) that could lift 140,000 pounds.

At 3:45 in the afternoon, after a few push backs, the rockets rumbled ready to lift off. The sound could be heard from miles and the shaking could be felt across the cape. The rocket launched, and with it was a Tesla Roadster that would eventually blare David Bowie's Space Oddity throughout the atmosphere.

Much like the space shuttle program, the Falcon Heavy rocket released the boosters from the sides and let them fall back into Earth's atmosphere. This left just the middle portion. After further ascending, the rocket released the bottom part of what was left of the middle section. This part was supposed to fall back down to Earth and land on a drone ship. Later, it was discovered that the center core did not land on the drone, and missed entirely.

Fun fact: the center core hit the water at 300 miles an hour

Anyway, other than the missed landing, the launch was a pretty big success. After the upper capsule separated from the center portion, the rest of the rocket carried the roadster and the dummy to a space trips around Earth's orbit and possibly to the asteroid belt. SpaceX has stated that the roadster could make it out there for awhile.

The Tesla has three cameras attached to it. We can ride around with it for a bit.

You can watch the launch here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c

Once in a blue moon

January 31^st was a rare and beautiful night for most of the country. The night was titled by NASA as well as a majority of major media outlets as a “super blue blood moon”. Say that three times fast.

A super blue blood moon occurs when the moon is at a total lunar eclipse (which makes it blood orange), when it is at its perigee (which basically means it is huge), and when it is a second full moon in a calendar month. This is an incredibly rare occurrence. So rare, the last time it happened was in 1982 and won’t happen again until 2037.

So, lets break this down for less (lunar)tics.

We have a lunar eclipse. Which occurs when the moon (hence in the “lunar” in “lunar eclipse”) passes within the Earth’s shadow. In the beginning, the shadow the Earth is creating is making the moon appear darker. As the shadow starts to cover the moon more and more, this turns the moon into a dark orange red color. The closer you are to the northern tip of the moon, the more colored it looks.

The super moon happens when the moon is the closest distance to the Earth in its cycle. It’s 7% larger than in average.

Lastly, the blue moon. Ever heard the phrase, “once in a blue moon”? This actually comes from space! Essentially, it’s a second full moon in a month. Super rare.

Mushing all of these things together in a weird and crazy coincidence makes a super blue blood moon and one heck of an experience.