This weekend: First ever iPADS IN SPAAAACE
Station 'nauts get fondleslabs 'for entertainment'
NASA will be streaming the live launch of a Russian Progress cargo spaceship this Saturday at 11pm BST, which will be carrying the precious cargo of food, oxygen, water and Apple iPads.
The launch is scheduled for 5:11am CDT from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and will be broadcast on NASA TV, which you can find here.
In amongst all the necessary stuff the current International Space Station crew needs will be the first fondleslabs in space.
"The Russians are flying two iPads on the next Progress. They're going to be used for entertainment purposes only," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told collectspace.com on Tuesday.
Astronauts and cosmonauts already have Apple iPods and an iPhone on board the space station, as well as laptops, but these will be the first tablets.
Humphries said that NASA was interested in looking into their future use in space.
"The US folks in the station programme are taking a look at a number of different tablets and kind of comparing and contrasting them," he said. "They are hoping to be able to fly one or more of them next year, but as yet the evaluation is not complete."
The launch will be the first of a Progress craft since the ISS Progress 44 and its supplies and equipment were lost on August 24 due to a third stage engine failure.
The current Progress, number 45, will also be using a Soyuz booster, the rocket whose malfunctioning gas generator was blamed for the last accident.
The 44 crash followed other mishaps for the Russian space agency, including the a Rokot booster's failure to lift a military satellite into geosynchronous orbit in February and a Proton-M booster losing three satellites in December.
Despite the run of bad luck, the space agencies must be feeling more optimistic this time, as footage of the ISS Progress 45 docking with the space station to deliver its payload of 2.72 metric tonnes of food, fuel and supplies three days after launch will also be shown.
The docking procedure will start at 1.15am GMT on November 2. ®
COMMENTS
Station 'nauts get fondleslabs 'for entertainment'
A tacit admission that they really are for people with a lot of free time on their hands?
Okay so I'm not about to turn down a free iPad, but I just don't get the point of them. I used to have a Gameboy (under 18s please Google it) for much the same reason, but then I stopped being a teenager. Maybe I'm completely off base here and they will turn out to be a vital business tool of the future - but most people I've seen with them are using it to play angry birds on a bigger screen. Perhaps I'm just on the way to becoming a grumpy old man.
Mines the one with the 8 bit teris cartridge in the pocket
Siri - "I don't know what you mean by 'Open the pod bay doors.'"
In space no-one can hear you
go look its got this really neat feature here somewhere hang on let me just get the wifi back and I'll show you no wait
Re: I thought rockets were fast
They are... The problem is that they are potentially TOO fast.
You don't simply aim your launch for where the target will be when the rocket gets there. If you're off by a scooch one way or another, or if there is a ,malfunction, you could have two large bodies trying to occupy the same space at the same time with widely differing relative velocities.
Much safer is to put your launch into an ALMOST identical orbit with an initial insertion point well away from your target and wait for the slightly different orbital speeds to bring the two objects together.
Think of it as a relay race: The baton carrier is already "in orbit" when the next runner starts running ahead and a bit slower, allowing the carrier to catch up at a relatively modest speed differential and make the hand-off.
...or was that intended as a joke...? I'm never good at telling these things...
