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Sites of the Week for June 1997

Week of June 2, 1997

International Space Station: NASA's new space station Web site, opened last month, is a notable improvement over the old version. There is updated information about the station assembly plan as well as some special feature articles about the station, the first crew scheduled to stay on the station, the proposed X-38 crew return vehicle, and more. There are also some nice new images of the station generated by computer modeling programs.
http://station.nasa.gov/

VentureStar: Lockheed Martin, developers of the X-33 vehicle that will test technologies for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle, recently opened this site to sell people on the X-33 and its planned operational version, the VentureStar. Much of this site is still in development, but you can sign onto a list to get mission updates, enter a contest to win a X-33 model, and more. The introduction to the site uses frames and heavy amounts of graphics; if you're using an older browser or are on a slower connection, you may want to skip directly to http://www.venturestar.com/public_html/homepage/index.html.
http://www.venturestar.com/

SERENDIP: SETI at the University of California: One of the major efforts in SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a long-running project at the University of California Berkeley called SERENDIP: Search for Extreterrestrial Radio Emissions from Neraby Developed Intelligent Populations) which has existed in one form or another since the late 1970s. Their current plans, explained at their Web site, involve using the 300-meter radio antenna at Arecibo starting this summer to search over 168 million channels every few seconds. Their Web site also has information on past efforts, links to other SETI sites, and a way for you to contribute to their work.
http://albert.ssl.berkeley.edu/serendip/

Resources from Space: Resources from Space is a Web site dedicated to a class taught in the spring of 1996 at the University of Wisconsin (one of the class instructors was Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt.) The full class notes for this site are online and serve as a good introduction to the use of space-based resources, including the Moon, Mars and the asteroids. The notes also examine economic and legal details regarding space resources and plans for the future.
http://elvis.neep.wisc.edu/~neep602/neep602.html

Extrasolar Visions: We don't know what the new planets that have been discovered around other stars look like, but artist John Whatmough provides one set of possibilties in his Web site, Extrasolar Visions. He has created some beautiful illustrations of what these new worlds might look like, given the limited information we have on them. He combines this with information about the new solar systems and their discoveries. A beautiful site to visit!
http://www.empire.net/~whatmoug/Extrasolar/extrasolar_visions.html

Tharsis Gallery: "Tharsis Gallery" is a collection of space art by Marilynn Flynn. As the name suggests, there is an emphasis on paintings of Mars and the exploration of it, but there's also artwork of other worlds and general human exploration of space. The pages here are very heavy with graphics and embedded sounds, so the pages will take a while to load on a slow connection. Given the quality of the artwork, though, it'll be worth the wait.
http://www.tharsisgallery.com/

John's Space Chronicle: John's Space Chronicle is an effort to provide a day-by-day chronicle of the Space Age, from Sputnik to the present day. Currently the owner of the site, John Pfannerstill, has limited his work to 1995, but he has provided a rich chronicle of the events of that year, complete with pleny of links to related sites for more information. We can't wait to see more!
http://members.aol.com/JAPfanner/index.html

space.magnificent.com: After visiting space.magnificent.com you'll agree that space, and this site, truly are magnificent. This site combines great images, Java, and other advanced Web features to provide some unique space-related resources. Of particular interest is a photoessay of Hubble Space Telescope images, by a University of Texas astronomer, and "The NASA Channels", a "Web application" that allows you to choose from among many live NASA TV feeds from Kennedy, Johnson, and Marshall. There's more to come at this site as well; if the planned additions are as good as what's already there this site will become one of the best on the Web for space features.
http://space.magnificent.com/

Mars Pathfinder: This Friday Mars Pathfinder completes its eight-month journey to the Red Planet with a July 4 landing. The place to be on the Web for this will be JPL's Mars Pathfinder Web site, and they're ready: their mirror sites are ready to handle over 60 million hits a day from curious Web surfers. Once you get there, you'll find plenty of updated information about the mission, the science planned for Pathfinder and its rover, Sojourner, and more. Also be sure to check out SpaceViews' own coverage of Mars Pathfinder at http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/pathfinder/.
http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/

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