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Today at 09:53 GMT the Space Shuttle Atlantis undocked from the Harmony Node of the International Space Station (ISS) after 6 days, 17 hours and 2 minutes. The undocking occurred just northeast of Indonesia, while both the station and the shuttle were in the dark of the Earth’s shadow (as it usually is the case for undocking).

Preparations for undocking are on the way as the ISS flies over the Mediterranean Sea - Source: NASA TV

Yesterday, the STS-129 and Expedition 21 crew members parted ways with a change of command and farewell ceremony, where Expedition 21 Commander Frank De Winne handed over the command of the International Space Station to NASA’s astronaut Jeff Williams (@Astro_Jeff). After the farewell ceremony, the crews closed the hatches that divide the two spacecraft at 18:12 GMT.

The STS-129 and Expedition 21 crew members bid farewell. Photo credit: NASA TV

After 87 days spent in the complex, Expedition 20 and 21 Flight engineer Nicole Stott (@Astro_Nicole), officially, item number 914, became the last astronaut who used the Space Shuttle for a lift to or from the station (as a member of the station’s Expedition crew). If Atlantis lands as scheduled, she will have spent 91 days in space.

Space Shuttle Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) is scheduled to execute the deorbit burn at 13:37 GMT on Friday, leading to landing at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) runway 33 at 14:44 GMT.

Update: See the mission details and more launch pictures in my STS-129 Space Shuttle Atlantis post.

The milestones of STS-129 Space Shuttle Atlantis launch (reverse order):

~ 19:37:43 GMT @ T+09:45 – Nominal MECO, OMS-1 not required.

- 19:36:31 GMT @ T+08:33 – External Tank (ET) separation.

External Tank (ET) Separation - Source: NASA TV

- 19:36:20 GMT @ T+08:22 -  The Main Engine Cut-off (MECO), zero thrust (at T+08:35). Atlantis has reach the planned orbit and is schedule to dock with the International Space Station on Flight Day 3.

- 19:35:13 GMT @ T+07:05 – Single engine press 104 – Atlantis can now reach planned orbit on a single engine at 104.5% throttle in case of two main engine failure.

- 19:35:05 GMT @ T+06:57 – Nominal shut down plan. Go for the plus X, and go for the pitch – The shuttle has can reach the planned elliptical orbit (before circularization) and without no a correction by the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) is necessary (OMS-1 not required). After the External Tank (ET) separation (SEP) the orbiter’s Reaction Control System (RCS) will execute a negative Z (in the direction up through the roof) translation maneuver to move the orbiter away from the ET. The “go for the pitch” refers to the ET Photo maneuver, which is a pitch around of the orbiter that allows the crew to take pictures of the tank out of the overhead windows.

- 19:34:48 GMT @ T+06:40 – Press to MECO (Main Engine Cut-off) and Single Engine Zaragoza 104 – Atlantis can now reach planned orbit in case of a single SSME failure and the Zaragoza TAL site on a single engine at 104.5% throttle.

- 19:33:33 GMT @ T+05:25 – Single Engine OPS-3 – Atlantis could now reach the designated TAL site with a single engine at Full Power Level (FPL), i.e 109% throttle, should two of the SSME’s fail.

- 19:32:57 GMT @ T+04:49 – Press to ATO select Zaragoza – Atlantis could now reach a safe 195 by 157 km orbit with two Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) throttled at Typical Mission Power Level (104.5%) in case of a single SSME failure. Should one of the engines fail the crew could execute the Abort To Orbit (ATO) maneuver (in case of TAL abort, the landing facility in Zaragoza, Spain would be used).

- 19:31:58 GMT @ T+03:50 – Negative Return – Atlantis has used too much fuel and is traveling too fast, too high and is too far to return to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for a potential Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort.

- 19:30:33 GMT @ T+02:25 – 2 engine Moron. Atlantis can now reach the Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) site in Moron in the case of a single engine failure.

- 19:30:12 GMT @ T+02:04 – Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation. Atlantis is at the altitude of 45 km, 40 km down range from the KSC, traveling at 5800 km/h (Mach 4).

Solid Rocket Booster (SBR) Separation - Source: NASA TV

~19:28:53 GMT @ ~T+00:45 – The shuttle passed Mach 1 while the engines were throttling down before Max-Q (the point of the greatest dynamic pressure)

Space Shuttle Atlantis moments after the liftoff completing the Roll Maneuver - Source: NASA TV

- 19:28:08 GMT @ T-00:00 – Lift-off. Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) ignition and lift-off of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-129 (ISS assembly flight ULF3) mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Solid Rocket Booster Ignition and Liftoff of Space Shuttle Atlantis - Source: NASA TV

- 19:28:01 GMT @ T-00:06.6 (and 06.48, 06.36) – The three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) start.

Space Shuttle Main Engines start - Source: NASA TV

- 19:27:59 GMT @ T-00:09 – The hydrogen burn-off system begins to eliminate free hydrogen exhausted into the main engine nozzles during the start sequence to prevent small, but potentially dangerous, explosions when the main engines ignite.

The hydrogen burn-off system begins to eliminate free hydrogen exhausted into the main engine nozzles - Source: NASA TV

- 19:27:53 GMT @ T-00:15 – The Sound Suppression Water System has been activated to protect Atlantis and the launch pad from acoustical energy and rocket exhaust reflected from the flame trench and Mobile Launcher Platform during launch.

The Sound Suppression Water System has been activated to protect Atlantis and the launch pad from acoustical energy and rocket exhaust reflected from the flame trench and Mobile Launcher Platform during launch - Source: NASA TV

- 19:27:37 GMT @ T-00:31 – Auto-sequence start. Atlantis’s on-board computers have primary control of all vehicle’s critical functions.

- 19:19:10 GMT: The countdown clock resumes at T-9min and counting.

- 17:32 GMT: Shuttle Atlantis’ hatch has been closed and latched for flight, the six STS-129 astronauts are strapped into their seats

- 15:59 GMT: The countdown clock resumes at T-3hr and counting.

The countdown clock resumes at T-3hrs - Source: NASA TV

- 15:39 GMT: The STS-129 crew leaves the crew quarters at the Operations and Checkout Building and board the Astrovan to head to the Pad 39A.

STS-129 crew members, from left, Robert Satcher, Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik, Leland Melvin, Pilot Barry Wilmore, and Mission Commander Charlie Hobaugh stop and pose for a photograph before getting into the Astrovan and heading to launch pad 39A at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 - Source: NASA/Bill Ingalls

- 15:33 GMT: Final inspection team is on the pad looking for ice & frost buildup on the External Tank

- 12:51 GMT: The shuttle tanking went into a stable replenish and the countdown entered a 2.5 hour long inbuilt hold at T-3 hours.

- 11:50 GMT: The liquid hydrogen tanking has reached 98% and will transition from fast-full to top-off at 2700 l per minute.

- 10:42 GMT: Liquid oxygen tanking changes to fast-fill mode at almost 6,000 l per minute. Liquid hydrogen is also in fast-fill phase adding almost 32,000 liters every minute into the external tank (ET)

- 10:33 GMT: Launch teams began liquid oxygen tanking in the slow-fill phase adding 1,200 liters every minute.

- 10:03 GMT: Fueling of the External Tank began with liquid hydrogen (at 20K) started in the slow-fill mode and the liquid oxygen (at 90.188 K) will follow at 10:33 GMT.

I have run into some difficulties with changing the system Desktop Picture (wallpaper), in my most recent application that downloads the Astronomy and Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day and sets them as the Desktop Pictures on my two screens. It was fairly simple to have the main screen Desktop Picture changed via this simple code:

tell application "Finder"
set desktop picture to file path_to_file
end tell

Unfortunately, the set desktop picture works only with the main screen and so I had to come up with a solution of how to achieve the same for the second monitor. I looked through OS X boards and forums, Googled all possible variations of keywords of ‘AppleScript’, ‘desktop picture’, ‘two’, ‘second’, ‘monitor’, ‘screen’, etc, but nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t get the Desktop Picture of the second monitor to change. Either the change required a restart (or at least the Finder application), or my attempts failed altogether. Even worse, authors of the code I found were talking about exactly the same issues I had. Among all those so-much-unhelpful lines of code, I found these, that seem to show quite a bit of promise:

tell application "System Events"
set theDesktops to a reference to every desktop
set picture of item 1 of theDesktops to path_to_file_1
set picture of item 2 of theDesktops to path_to_file_2
end tell

The above code did was it was meant to do, i.e set the Desktop Picture of the two screens, but a restart was needed (I usually only killed and restarted Finder).

After some time I realized that the code I had at the beginning (for the main screen) did not have this problem … or rather that it (somehow) refreshed the wallpaper data immediately. Finally I thought that maybe refreshing the picture on the first monitor would (somehow) cause the second monitor picture to change. Yeap, that did the trick:

tell application "Finder"

tell application "System Events"
set theDesktops to a reference to every desktop
set picture of item 2 of the theDesktops to file path_to_file_2
end tell

set desktop picture to file path_to_file_1
end tell

The key, though a bit unusual, is to set the Desktop Picture for the second monitor first, and only AFTER that, set the main screen Desktop Picture. As a side note, I should add that the path_to_file_1 and path_to_file_2 were in POSIX format and I’ve used the following code for that:

set path_to_file1 to POSIX file "/Users/myusername/Desktop/file1.jpg"
set path_to_file2 to POSIX file "/Users/myusername/Desktop/file2.jpg"

Download my APOD AAPOD Desktop application.

Some time ago I wrote a little batch script that downloads the most recent Astronomy Picture Of Day (APOD) and sets it as your desktop wallpaper (on a Windows system). This time, I’ve improved on it a bit. First of all, it’s a for OSX (tested on OSX 10.5.8). But the major improvement is that apart from an APOD image, it also downloads the Amateur Astronomy Picture Of Day (AAPOD) which it then sets as the Desktop Picture on my second screen.

Unlike for the Windows app, there is no need for any additional libraries (such as wget, grep, etc for win32) as a typical OSX installation has all necessary tools (curl and perl are required, but should be installed under the majority of installation settings). The main script, wallpaper.pl, that does all the hard work is written in Perl using its powerful text processing capabilities. The other core file, named setdesktop.sh, is just a simple applescript (executed via shell) that sets the Desktop Pictures for my two screens.

The wallpaper.pl is based on Harold Bakker’s APOD script. I have added some command line options and the bits to get the AAPOD image. By default, all images, both APOD and AAPOD, will be stored within the images directory (although this can be disabled via a command line option). When you unpack the application archive there will be two items. One is the apod_aapod.zip containing the necessary files and the other is the install.command*.

The install.command is a simple shell script that sets everything up. It unpacks the contents of the apod_aapod.zip into the /Applications/APOD_AAPOD/ directory (which it creates if the directory doesn’t exists). During the installation the APOD_AAPOD.app application is created (by compiling plain AppleScript using osacompile). Finally, the script will add the newly created application to your Login Items so that your desktop pictures are updated every time you log in.

In the default setting, the application is meant to work with two monitors system. The APOD image will be set as the desktop picture on the main screen and the AAPOD will be set as the desktop picture on the second screen. To modify this behavior is fairly easy:

To apply the changes, either wait until the next time you log, or run the “APOD_AAPOD” application.

* Note: The only reason is has the .command extension instead of the typical .sh is that so it can be executed by double-clicking on the file. If you prefer to run in via terminal, simply rename it to install.sh and run it via sh install.sh.

Update 3: Official Ares I-X launch video:

Update 2: Ares I-X launch video:

Update 1: NASA has issued the following press release regarding the launch or Ares I-X

Today at 15:30 UTC, NASA launched Ares I-X from launch pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Ares I-X is the first test flight of the Ares I launch system – part of NASA’s Constellation program to developer spacecraft and booster vehicles to replace the Space Shuttle and send astronauts back to the Moon and possibly to Mars.

The first launch attempt yesterday was scrubbed due to weather rule violations and, at one moment, a cargo ship which ventured into the splash down and debris fallout area. The weather today was not much better at first, with what seemed to be a never-ending violation of the triboelectrification rule, but about 15:20 UTC, NASA launch weather officer, Kathy Winters, declared the weather green for the launch attempt at 15:30.

Ares I-X ignition - Source: SpaceVidCast/NASA TV

Ares I-X liftoff - Source: SpaceVidCast/NASA TV

Prandtl-Glauert Singularity as Ares I-X reaches Mach 1 - Source: SpaceVidCast/NASA T

At about T+2 minutes and 04 seconds after the liftoff, the first stage have separated properly and continued coasting upward to an altitude of about 39.6 km before beginning its descent. The top part of the Ares 1-X rocket, called the upper stage and Orion crew module simulator, continued on an uncontrolled trajectory and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Ares I-X First Stage Separation - Source: SpaceVidCast/NASA TV

It has been a while since so many events occurred in such a short time span – The immensely successful LCROSS, the Galilean Nights, the Orionids delivering a spectacular show; I can hardly wait for the Autumn Moonwatch to start on Saturday.

Once again, I have created a gallery powered by services such as twitpic, yfrog.com, img.ly, twitgoo.com, and flic.kr. Whenever someone sends a #Moonwatch, #Meteorwatch and #GalileanNights picture to Twitter, a thumbnail with links to the full size image along with the tweep’s text will be added to the gallery.

Having created similar galleries for the summer meteorwatch, The Great Look Up and the regular Space Shuttle gallery, the relatively small modifications required for the Moonwatch wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this time I’ve included a few extra bits:

First of all, there is the treemap visualization displaying the participation of twitter users in the three topics of #Moonwatch, #Meteorwatch and #GalileanNights.

The treemap displays users' participation in the #Moonwatch, #Meteorwatch and #GalileanNights topics via twitter

Next,  there is a newly created twitter account @MoonWatchPix that sends a tweep every time a new picture is added to the gallery, thus making it easy to keep track of photos/images posted to twitter for the #Moonwatch, #Meteorwatch and #GalileanNights events.

The Moonwatch twitter event starts on Monday, October 26. To join in, you can simply tweet with the hashtag #Moonwatch or follow NewburyAS or @astronomy2009uk.