[Merry Christmas] Our hopes for the coming year and what we've done...

Fixerger

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I'm surprised no one made a thread about our achievements in the human space flight and science in a year 2010 and thoughts/hopes about our future year (Or i failed to find such thread %) ).

So... what was this year for me?

Hard to tell all the exciting (and sad) news i've read so i think for me that will be Falcon 9 success... some settlement for NASA (it was a hard year for them), Hayabusa mission and other asteroid encounters, Venus Climate Orbiter, SDO mission (got really nice images, look at them!... and our Sun is finally woke up); China's new probe to Moon is the great step. Cassini is doing a very good job (just look at that close-up images of Saturn's moons...and new discoveries). Special thanks for that Japan solar sail (which is flying pretty fast)! Discoveries of the new extraterrestrial planets (with some exciting images) will provide more understanding to our scientists of how our and other planetary systems form etc. China will probably have more launches than US in 2010 and Russia is doing well (except of that failed Glonass launch but it is not that bad).

In the coming year i hope for... launch of MSL (or in 2012) to assess ancient martian terrain; the arrival of our probes to Venus (or it is already there) and Mercury; NASA will make some final decisions about the new heavy lift (or whatever...) and their path (and oh... some funding will arrive). New Horizons is still on its way to Pluto and will (or already) cross Uranus orbit soon (don't forget this is a flyby mission - a big disappoint for me :(). I hope the Space Shuttle will have better year (without delays like now) and the ISS will be soon completed. I can bet the next merged(hope) COTS Falcon 9 launch to ISS will be really hot event for us! Chinese and Russians maybe will launch some probes... to Moon and Phobos (or Grant mission is delayed again to 2012?). I'm really waiting for some Chinese lander on the Moon that year... images and videos will be great. For now Mars and Moon orbiters are pretty stable for me (really glad to see 'water research' on both targets). Oppy is running well but sooo sloooow (speed of light is limitation... Where are you Humans on Mars? Or perhaps some EDL technology research at least... R. D. Braun has good paper on that) and Spirit is still asleep. There's many probes waiting for their job which i don't mention so I will be happy to see them soon on orbit.

So, Happy New Year and don't forget to express your thoughts about :probe:
 
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Here's some festive space-related fun. Merry Christmas to all Orbinauts! :cheers: :tiphat:

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Video: Santa visits the ISS! :lol:​
Video: ISS Crew Sends Holiday Greetings to All.​
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Merry Christmas from Commander Scott Kelly aboard the ISS!
iss026e009371.jpg

Hi-res version.

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Santa Looks to Final Rendezvous With NASA's Space Shuttles.

Santa Claus is expected to make an unforgettable flyby of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida this Christmas Eve to see the three space shuttles as they are prepared for their final missions.

NASA granted the jolly ol' elf and his nine reindeer permission to fly over various Kennedy sites, including the Shuttle Landing Facility, the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), and orbiter processing facilities (OPF) where Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis are being readied for launch.

The VAB is considered to be one of the few structures outside the North Pole that is big enough to hold Santa's giant sack of toys. Reaching 525 feet into the Florida Space Coast sky and covering eight acres, the VAB could hold more than 129 million typical toys.

Inside the VAB, Discovery's external fuel tank is being evaluated to make sure there are no cracks in 21-foot-long support beams, called stringers, on the outside of the tank's intertank region, before launching on the STS-133 mission to the International Space Station. Santa's leading reindeer, Rudolph, might even pick up some tips on how to spray foam insulation onto his coat, and nose, for future out-of-this-world, gift-giving journeys.

Mr. Claus also can sneak a peek inside Discovery's payload bay to check out a small shuttle replica, made entirely of LEGO building blocks. The toy shuttle is the beginning of a three-year partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group, and is meant to spark children's interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.

Also going up with Discovery is a human-like robot called R2, which is short for Robonaut 2. The robot vaguely resembles "Eve" from the Disney movie "Wall-E" and is equipped with humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision to help astronauts with tasks aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Next, St. Nick can drop by OPF-2 to get an up-close view of Endeavour, which is being processed for the final scheduled shuttle mission, STS-134. He also can get a look at Endeavour's payload by stopping off at the Space Station Processing Facility where the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, or AMS, is undergoing testing. The AMS will measure cosmic rays as they move through space and is expected to unlock more answers to the structure of the universe while raising more questions after it is installed on the outside of the space station next year.

Comet and Cupid could also pick up some horsepower tips from Atlantis, which just got its three main engines installed this month -- the last planned space shuttle main engine installation before the Space Shuttle Program retires in 2011.

And as is tradition, Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility will be available for Santa and his reindeer crew if they would like to make one last "touch-and-snow" while it is still an active space shuttle runway.
 
Out of this entire year COTS-1 was probably the most exciting thing that happened.. HUGE success. Next year I hope we get STS-135 and finish out the shuttle program on a warm summer day in June 2011.
 
I think, I read at least two times this years about record-like achievements from voyager 1 & 2. I think these 33-years-voyages should also be mentioned.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

5288653361_a009eaf252.jpg


oliver
 
Merry Christmas ! Be the Space Agencies correctly funded, their missions successful and the probe hailed ! :hailprobe:

Thanks to the crew of the ISS for this video ! Thanks to Dr Schweiger for its amazing, every-year-better simulator ! And thanks to all the Orbitnauts for their addons, tutorials, posts and everything ! :thankyou:
 
Merry Christmas to all!

This past year was a big deal for me, I got back into space, which basically gave me a defined plan for what to do with my life. It also gave me orbiter, which is really what I spend most of my free time on.
 
From Forum Orbiter Italia,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

remebering Apollo 8!


 
Santa visited the VAB last night! I hope he passed on some of his magic to ET-137! :lol:​
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-aEPAkmOuA"]YouTube - Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States[/ame]

Merry Christmas to all! :cheers:
 
Frankly, I'm the most interested about MESSENGER. Probe willing, it should enter Mercurian orbit and begin its mission proper in mid-March.

Regarding human spaceflight, it would be nice to see COTS-2 and COTS-3 merged into a single mission so F9-Dragon can go fully operational in 2011. Also, full suborbital flights of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo.

And Copenhagen Suborbitals supposedly got the Danish navy to let them try to launch their rocket again.

:hailprobe:
 
Merry Christmas everyone!! Thanks for making the community an enjoyable place to visit and hears to another great year++!

:cheers:
 
Oh... i've just read about the failure of Venus Climate Orbiter, so sad... Let's hope for another probes to Venus!
 
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