Magnificent Milestone

                  Image Credit: 

NASA/Bill Ingalls

ROCKET FIRE: What a day! 

I had my alarm set for 3:45 a.m. so we could get up and watch Orion (hopefully) lift off from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. (We'd upped yesterday with the same goal, only to find out the launch was scrubbed about 2.5 hours later.)

However, I didn't need an alarm this morning, as CJ came into our room at 3 a.m. and croaked, "Help me ..."  

That gets your attention.

Poor kid has a terrible cold, and was very croupy overnight. I told him to hit the (hot, steamy) shower, and then we headed downstairs to check out Orion. 

The launch window opened at 4:05 a.m. and very unlike yesterday, that rocket lit right on time and ZOMG, what a sight it was to see! 

Seriously, it roared like a dragon and rumbled off the pad, a jaw-dropping spectacle. if you haven't seen video of the launch and ascent to orbit, it's worth your time to check out this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuOpxOrA_0&feature=youtu.be

For the 4-plus hours post launch, we watched the spacecraft go through its paces, and it performed seemingly perfectly. There was no chatter about engineers working any troubles whatsoever. 

Today, a man-rated NASA spacecraft reached the highest altitude (3,600 miles) that any similarly-rated craft has reached since 1972, and Apollo 17, oh so long ago. Finally, we're headed back in the right direction. 

I love this photo, taken from *inside* Orion when it was near its apogee. 

Eventually, it was time for Orion to head home. As we were watching the splashdown at 8:29 a.m. our time, I said to the kids, "When you're my age, hopefully you'll be watching astronauts returning from Mars in Orion." 

Annabelle was quick to correct me, saying, "Or, we'll be IN it."

Amen to that, Annabelle!  (The photo above is from Kennedy Space Center, when we went to watch the STS-32 launch of Shuttle Atlantis.)

This afternoon, NASA Administrator (and former astronaut) Charles Bolden said, "Today’s flight test of Orion is a huge step for NASA and a really critical part of our work to pioneer deep space on our Journey to Mars. The teams did a tremendous job putting Orion through its paces in the real environment it will endure as we push the boundary of human exploration in the coming years.”

However, no one's going to Mars until the issue of radiation exposure for the astronauts is resolved. To that end, in pre-test flight coverage this a.m., NASA urged the public to help them develop a work around. Check out the NASA Challenge: Reducing Galactic Cosmic Rays to Enable Long Duration Deep Space Human Exploration here: https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933637

But back to Orion. As of Friday evening, the capsule was recovered (plucked from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, California) and it's safely inside the USS Anchorage. It's expected to be off-loaded at Naval Base San Diego on Monday. 

EINSTEIN FOR EVERYONE: While Orion was dominating our minds and social media today, it's worth taking time out to talk about another really great thing that happened today. 

Princeton University Press has released "The Digital Einstein Papers," an open-access site featuring the collected papers of Albert Einstein. 

The site includes writings and correspondence of Einstein from his youth (b. 1879) to 1923, the first 44 years of his life. Approximately 7,000 pages representing 2,900 unique documents have been digitized so far. They're presented in their original language, but users can toggle to an English translation for most documents. 

Organizations collaborating on the project are the California Institute of Technology (the project’s home), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (home to the Albert Einstein Archives) and Princeton University Press.

The Internet is a wonderful thing.