Shuttle launch

Kevin Miller made this mosaic of the Space Shuttle.

One small step for man

CustomBricks made this rendition of a footprint from the Apollo moon landings (seen via the blog Lego Diem).

Launch Complex 39A

Mick Chan built this amazing version of Launch Complex 39A (more pics).

Movin' rockets around

Vincez01 built the Saturn V launch pad and the Space Shuttle crawler-transporter.

July 20, 1969

Legorevolution celebrated the Apollo 11 moon landing. There's so much to love about this model. In addition to the great figure, note how he did the surface of the moon, and the frame includes Armstrong's famous quote and micro versions of the Saturn V, the lunar lander and the command module.

Bringing people into space since 1968

Pasukaru76 made the Russian space workhorse, the Soyuz Spacecraft.

NASA

Galen built this NASA logo.

Kennedy Space Center

Teazza created this amazing version of Launch Complex 39-A (including his shuttle Crawler-Transport) and the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Seven minutes of terror

I'll come back to energy tomorrow, but I wanted to take a moment to congratulate the scientists and engineers at NASA on the incredible news from Mars. I'm sure if you read this blog you already picked up on this, but yesterday Curiosity landed safely on Mars. The landing used a very unique system. First a parachute helped slow down the landing vehicle, then rockets slowed down the descent stage even further, until it was left hovering about 25 feet above the surface of the planet. Then the Curiosity rover was lowered down from this 'sky crane' on cables, to touch down and roll off on its merry way. Alex Kobbs (Kooberz) made a fun video of this landing.

Two famous women

I'll get back to energy tomorrow, but I wanted to pause to remember Sally Ride, who passed away yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. In 1983 she made history as the first American woman in space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. She served other roles in the Shuttle program, including working in communications for other flights, helping to develop the Shuttle's robotic arm, going into space again on a subsequent mission, and, sadly, as part of the presidential commission to investigate the 1986 Challenger explosion. Among her roles after NASA she was a professor of physics and president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded to promote science education among grade schoolers. Here she is in LEGO by Pixbymaia.


In a coincidence of timing, when I went to the computer to post this, today's Google doodle celebrates another important woman in aerospace history, Amelia Earhart, as today is the 115th anniversary of her birth. Earhart made history as the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, along with many other aviation records. She was also active in promoting women in aviation careers, and a supporter of women's rights in general. She disappeared along with navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 in the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to fly around the globe, and her body has never been found (leading to all kinds of different conspiracy theories). In fact, also in the news today is the cancellation of a search for the wreckage of her plane. Here is a LEGO form of Earhart by Fede1845.

Pegusus XL

Apojove made the Pegasus XL rocket, which is launched from an airplane at high altitude to carry small payloads into orbit.

Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope (on the right, by RomainGrosjean), has been in operation for the past 22 years. From its vantage point above the earth's atmosphere, it can take amazing high resolution images without the atmospheric distortion or light pollution that plague traditional observatories.

Spirit and Opportunity

The second rovers to land on Mars were Spirit and Opportunity as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Touchdown occurred in 2004 with a mission designed to last 90 Martian days. Contact with Spirit was finally lost in 2010 while Opportunity continues to operate today, over eight years later. You can learn more about the Mars Exploration Rovers at the official NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rovers website. Minifig scale rover by apojove.

Pathfinder

Apojove posted these pictures of his Mars Pathfinder, the unmanned probe that landed on Mars in 1997. He depicts it here as a tourist attraction in an imagined future. Interestingly, NASA recently released a request to future lunar explorers to please leave the Apollo landing sites alone to preserve them for future historians and to protect ongoing scientific studies.

Mars Science Laboratory

A couple of days ago I posted the Curiosity, or the Mars Science Laboratory, by a then-unknown WAMALUG member. It turns out it is by Apojove, who was actually one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers who helped design this probe.

VAB

Camelboy68 built this version of the Vehicle Assembly Building from the Kennedy Space Center. This building, one of the largest by volume in the world, was built to be large enough to assemble Saturn V rockets, and has been used since 1968 to prepare rockets for launch.

More Mars

Following up on yesterday's post, I should note that LEGO has a history with Mars rovers. The LEGO Company partnered with NASA and the Planetary Society in a contest to name the Mars rovers that launched in 2003, with the winners coming up with Spirit (which operated on Mars from 2004-2010) and Opportunity (which is still operational today). As part of the deal, LEGO released a line of NASA themed sets, including 7469, Mission to Mars, and 7471, Mars Exploration Rover.

Mission to Mars

The Space Shuttle Discovery is now in place at its permanent home, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (in case you don't know, this is a huge complex outside of Washington DC near Dulles Airport - it's part of the whole Smithsonian, just not located down on the Mall near most of the other museums). It looks like WAMALUG recently displayed there, perhaps as part of events surrounding the opening of this new exhibit. A WAMALUG member, presumably TJJohn12, built these Mars probes. The first model is the Curiosity, a rover that is currently en route to Mars (set to land this August) with the mission to study the possibility that Mars ever supported life, collect data in preparation for a potential future manned mission, and to study the soil and geology of Mars. The second is the Mars Pathfinder, which landed on Mars in 1997 and operated for three months (in excess of its planned one month lifetime), conducting tests of the atmosphere and soil. The lander, dubbed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station unfolded to reveal solar panels and release a rolling robot named Sojourner.

Skylab

Skylab (here in virtual LEGO form by iPaloosa) was a space station operated by NASA in the early 1970s. Scientific missions included close observations of solar activity and studies on the long term effects of microgravity on the astronauts (to consider the long term feasibility of living and working in space). In 1979, atmospheric drag caused the space station to lose altitude and then fall back to earth, with debris landing near Perth, Australia.

Extra-vehicular activity

In 1965, Alexey Leonov went on the very first space walk, leaving behind the relative security of his orbiting Voskhod 2 capsule and depending only on his spacesuit for survival. Since then it has become much more common (Wikipedia lists 351 instances) for astronauts to maneuver outside to perform tasks like satellite repairs. Both icare and Dar2k came up with similar space walk scenes for the recent L13 contest on BrickPirate with the them 'head in the stars'.