My 10 Years of Yuri's Night in Photos, Поехали! Cc: @YurisNight

I've been connected to the global phenomenon of Yuri's Night, the World Space Party, for over 10 years. This April will be my 11th year participating and I figured the best way to capture my history was through photos. The post contains the last 10 years in review in anticipation for 2013 and I hope it inspires others to host events around the world. The trip down memory lane picking photos was well worth the time it took to assemble this post. "Not only am I the Executive Director, I'm an event co-organizer! --> Yuri's Night Cocoa Beach April 12th and 13th, and I'm helping the Space Coast set up other events: http://spacecoast.yurisnight.net/ I'd be happy to answer questions about the photos in the comments. ROCK THE PLANET!

Space!
Ryan

2003 - Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volunteering for Yuri's Night LA - JPL Family Day at the Santa Anita Race Track taking photos of kids and Photoshoping them into astronaut spacesuits.	Encounter at LAX
Loretta [Hidalgo] and George Whitesides, YN co-creators and superstars	Aarti and I representing ISU MSS '03
The after party and Loretta's birthday party

Rockets light up October skies in Florida - #GPSIIF3 & #CRS1 #Dragon Launches on Delta IV & Falcon 9

Two launches in the span of four days occurred on the Space Coast this week with ULA's Delta IV rocket carrying the GPSII-F3 satellite (October 4th) and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifting a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for the Commercial Resupply Services Mission, CRS-1 (October 7th, they also had a secondary payload). This week has been window into our future on the Space Coast where we can expect multiple launches per week, every week. I hope we open space access to the point of daily launches, at least suborbital flights.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for the Commercial Resupply Services Mission, CRS-1

The photo composite of the Falcon 9 launch above is of five photos, each with 13 seconds of exposure. The photomerge created an interesting inversion in the middle of the contrail, but I like the artistic feature. This was my first night launch, so based on my Shuttle launch experience I was expecting 10-15 seconds before hitting a cloud deck. I was off by a significant factor, but at least I will be ready for the next night launch, of which there will be plenty! The HD video I shot with my phone is below. It was like watching a star get lifted into the night sky.



These are a couple of my favourite shots from the Delta IV launch. I love the long contrail that rockets leave behind that connect the earth to the cosmos, ripping a hole through the atmosphere. The classic zoom picture of a rocket just off the launch pad with a strong reflection in the water never gets old. It's a very personal souvenir that captures the excitement of the launch, and the immense power of the rocket.

This Delta IV launch was flawless on a beautiful morning from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 37B.

The Delta IV rocket carrying the GPSII-F3 satellite well clear of the tower and heading into the cosmos.

The official stats form the launches:

Oct. 4	Delta 4  •  GPS 2F-3
Launch time: 1210 GMT (8:10 a.m. EDT) Launch site: SLC-37B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket deployed the Air Force's third Block 2F navigation satellite for the Global Positioning System. The rocket flew in the Medium+ (4,2) configuration with two solid rocket boosters. Delayed from Sept. 20. See our Mission Status Center. [Oct. 4]

Oct. 7/8

Falcon 9  •  SpaceX CRS 1

Launch time: 0035 GMT on 8th (8:35 p.m. EDT on 7th) Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the third Dragon spacecraft on the first operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. Delayed from Aug. 9 and Sept. 24. See our Mission Status Center. [Oct. 7]

Once in a Blue Moon - Full Moon "Moonshots" / photos! Also, we are off to Florida!

Tonight/tomorrow is a Blue Moon. There are multiple definitions including the third full moon in a season that has four, or the second full moon of a month (more info here). The actual full Moon will occur tomorrow morning at 9:57am EDT (August 31st, 2012), the approximate time for when Jen and I hit to road to move to Florida. I will be starting my new job at Space Florida next week! I have had a great 20 months at MIT working with Dava Newman and Jeff Hoffman in the Man-Vehicle Laboratory (Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and with Maria Zuber and Ben Weiss (briefly) in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). With the sad passing of legendary Moonwalker Neil Armstrong (there is a photo of when I met Neil at the bottom of this post), I was inspired by a blog post about how to photograph the Moon. I decided on my last night in Cambridge before our move, to try and play with my camera settings to capture my favorite neighbor with some cool Moonshots. For the most part the photos were so-so, but the last shot I took did some squirrelly effects and the background of the image surrounding the Moon is highlighted by blue streaks! For the camera buffs out there I was shooting with a Nikon D90 in RAW(.nef) on S-mode and the image data was recorded as: Focal length 92, F number 5.6, Exposure Program 4, and Exposure time 1/250. And even stranger, when you zoom in on the Moon it looks like a QR code mixed with a hedge maze. The photo randomness, I mean artistic composition, is truly only possible once in a Blue Moon, and it's a great day to be moving to Florida!

Blue streaks caused by some funky digital effects highlight my Blue Moon photo.

If you scan this photo you will safely reamin on my website. What an awesome QR code!

Prof. David Klaus snapped this photo of Neil Armstong and I at the 2012 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Palo Alto, CA. I told him about my PhD lunar dust abrasion research and how his reporting and lessons learned during on the Moon was a key resource and how their journey is still an inspiration. You can watch Neil's X-15 (my favorite spaceplane) research talk from NSRC 2012 on YouTube.