Well… this is it. Get your fill of landing (and launch!) photos here. The landing was beautiful… and sad, very sad. The thing with perhaps the most sustained influence on my life, is over today.

Goodbye, Space Shuttle, and thank you.

Credit & Copyright: Ben Cooper (Launch Photography, launchphotography.com)

Two weeks from today (we hope!), space shuttle Atlantis will make her final climb into orbit, on the final space shuttle flight of the program. I, along with many, many others, will be there to see her off. I grew up with space shuttles, they defined my dreams for most of my life, and it seems fitting to be in Florida for the final sendoff. I’ll be at the Space View Park Tweetup event, please join us! (Registration is FREE.)

An artists impression of the green crystals falling down upon the star, almost like glitter. Picture: NASA/JPL

I’m a big fan of olivine/peridot, so when I saw this article about — get this — a star bombarded by peridot rain, I knew I had to post it!

MORE proof that space is amazing, this time from the not-too-distant constellation of Orion, where one star is currently being bombarded with green crystal rain.

The embryonic star is described as “Sun-like” – as in our Sun – and named HOPS-38.

The crystals are a green mineral called olivine and have been spotted raining down from the clouds of gas engulfing HOPS-68 by NASA’s Spitzer infrared detectors.

Much as I would like to visit, I’ll have to content myself with one day visiting Hawaii’s green beach (composed primarily of olivine crystals; scroll down.)

Old news (but good news): meet the star with a 10 billion trillion trillion carat diamond at its core! I’ve been fascinated with the thought of diamond-core stars and planets ever since first reading 2010. Just last year, studies indicated possible carbon-rich, diamond-core planets; for those of you on a budget, there’s a cubic zirconia (and/or zircon) star that will suit any piece of cosmic-sized jewelry. Both cubic zirconia and zircon are diamond simulants, CZ being the most popular.

You might ask why I’m stuck on diamonds, seemingly out of the blue — the truth is, I’ve been saving this post up. I am just finishing Diamonds & Diamond Grading, as part of my Graduate Gemologist coursework, and today is my first final exam in approximately 7.5 years. I have been studying THE SPARKLIES at great length and thus ends my weak attempt at a tie-in between my two favorite subjects: SPACE, and SPARKLY ROCKS.

Incidentally, the reason you don’t see more star-shaped diamonds — whole, one-piece stars, I mean — is because so much of the rough carat weight is lost in cutting. An efficient shape, it is not.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight into orbit — the first human to orbit our planet. It’s also Yuri’s Night, a worldwide celebration of human spaceflight! Check out the link for a party near you!

Yuri Gagarin

It is ALSO the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight; you can see beautiful white Columbia below, awaiting her first launch. (I had a poster of this when I was in high school; put it on my ceiling so I could stare at it before I went to sleep.)

Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

I choked up as I watched space shuttle Discovery land this morning, and wept as I heard Commander Lindsey say, “Houston, Discovery. For the final time, wheelstop.” Discovery had 27 years of service, 39 flights, traveling 148,221,675 miles. She made 5,830 orbits of Earth, with a total of 365 days in space. She took us back into space after the loss of Challenger and Columbia, and served us faithfully.

Godspeed, Discovery.

STS-133/Discovery revealed after RSS retraction, 2-23-2011. Photo by ME!

I’ve decided that being able to post MY VERY OWN SPACE PICTURE is an awesome feeling, beyond my capability to describe. I hope I have another VERY OWN picture to post tomorrow, and I will say no more that might border on jinxing anything.

Go Discovery!

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoshichan/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/silverrockets (I have set Twitter to update my Facebook, for those connected to me there.)

Blog: You are here. Let’s see what happens on Thursday!

There are no formal NASA Tweetup “events” this time around, but there are ~110 of us coming back, so I’m sure the #nasatweetup tag will be in heavy use, and therefore NASA Buzzroom will be the happening place (no Twitter acct required to view!)

Safe travels to all my fellow NASA Tweetup friends – see you in FL!

It was a challenge to find a neat photo to use today, one that I hadn’t used last year on the “big” anniversary. 41 years ago today, man first set foot on the lunar surface. As Pars3c pointed out, it’s good to remember this stuff more often than just the “fives” and “tens”.

It’s hard to know how to feel on this anniversary. A year ago, NASA was still going to the Moon (in a human way.) The public was watching WeChooseTheMoon.org as it counted down the milestones of Apollo 11 in real-time. On a very microscopic level, in the grand scheme of things, I was still figuring out this blog and had not yet rebranded and moved to a fabulous new domain. Also, my theme dictated that my pictures be smaller than they are now. (Hooray for bigger pictures!)

Now, it seems to me that all of NASA is up in the air, seemingly doomed by a statement from the current NASA administrator that we can’t leave LEO without international help. Really? We can’t? If you say so…. At this moment, people are gathered at a conference, presenting the myriad of reasons why the Moon is a great place to go — a fascinating collection of mysteries begging for human hands to explore them. Yet, by our current president’s statement, “we’ve already been there.” Really? It’s over, just like that? Well, if you say so….

And so I find myself hunkering down in the past, the way I’ve always been. I was asked this weekend to contribute to a podcast — and sadly I couldn’t — about how Apollo affected me personally. It’s a hard question. I was born in 1978, so I missed the whole thing by a matter of years. Still, I had the space bug from a very young age, and although I was a child of the Space Shuttle, the moon landings particularly fascinated me. Apollo made me want to become an astronaut, and although things didn’t go that way, it still has a profound effect on me. I dreamed, and still do dream, of the Moon. I’ll probably always be stuck in the past, between Apollo and the Shuttle. Certainly I see no reason to stick my head out into the future. At the moment, NASA gives me no hope at all. Perhaps commercial endeavors will, in time. We’ll see.

Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

I’ve seen and heard snippets of this poem, but never read it in entirety before this week. It is a beautiful thing. (Hat tip to John C. Wright for posting it!) It seems to fit well with this lovely launch photo — the rocket in question delivered three individuals into orbit on Wednesday, and to the ISS yesterday.

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.