OutdoorType

I am declaring February as Brian’s Month of Many Things Space-y.

To date I have:

• Watched live coverage on NASA TV of STS-122 (Atlantis) blasting off into space.
• Which inspired me to purchase and watch an all time favourite movie, Space Camp.
• Which inspired me to watch The Right Stuff.
• Which indirectly lead me to a Flickr meetup and first visit to Udvar-Hazy where I saw, among other things, the original Space Shuttle Enterprise.

And today, well, today was the space hat trick in which:

• This morning the Shuttle Atlantis safely landed at the Cape, flying a final approach that was 20x higher and 7x steeper than a commercial airliner (this has been my most favourite space shuttle fact until I learned today - thanks Heather - that until like 1997 the shuttle had to end each mission by midnight, Dec 31 or else a Y2K-like bug might strike and totally cripple the mission). Anyways, I couldn’t watch the landing live this time, but as consolation I had the official landing blog to read and could chat on the Google with someone who actually likes this stuff more than me.
• Tonight the full moon was fully eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow, and turned a shade close to blood red. Most amazingly there was not a cloud in the sky and the whole show was visible. Somehow the earlier snow storm managed to blow through leaving behind only a slight dusting on the ground. I should mention that t-shirts, shorts, and sandals is not really appropriate eclipse viewing attire when you are in the northern hemisphere and it is February and there is snow on the ground.
• Finally tonight, the United States Navy shot down a man made satellite that was hanging out in low Earth orbit! We, the US of A, did this for your safety and oh by the way, if you are a foreign nation and are worried about, you know, debris and junk check this out:

The military also timed its efforts to minimize the chances that debris would hit populated areas. But the United States is “prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory,” according to a report of Rocca’s remarks on the Web site of the Geneva office of the U.N.

See how nice we are? If for some reason “debris” (read: super secret spy satellite parts) has impacted upon your territory we will happily come by and pick it up for you.