Space and astronomy stories for the week ending May 12, 2012

I enjoyed posting my previous post of space and astronomy stories so much that I decided to continue the series with the articles and videos I included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Total Recall and Marriage Equality edition) on Daily Kos.

NASA Television on YouTube: Latest Update on New Space Station Crew on This Week @NASA

Activities for new Expedition 31 crewmembers, Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin include a pre-launch fit check in a Soyuz capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the raising of flags outside the Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters and launch to the orbiting laboratory to meet up with NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency. Also, SpaceX continues its preparations for the planned May 19 launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, new findings about the asteroid Vesta by NASA's DAWN spacecraft and more!

NASA Television on YouTube: ScienceCasts: Don't Judge a Moon by its Cover

Superficially, Saturn's moon Phoebe doesn't look much like a planet, but on the inside, the little gray moon has a lot in common with worlds like Earth.

Purdue University: Students honor former astronaut with outdoor sculpture of solar system, hope to inspire others in STEM
May 10, 2012

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – An interactive sculpture of the planetary system, about a football field in length, will crown a new mall at the south end of Purdue's Discovery Park.

Purdue students in a service-learning class designed the sculpture -Visiting Our Solar System, VOSS - and named it in honor of the late Janice Voss, a Purdue alumna who flew on five shuttle missions. Trustees and other Purdue leaders will get their first look at a three-foot high model at 3 p.m. Friday (May 11) on the future mall.

Completion of the mall, between the Hall for Discovery and Learning Research and Terry House west of Martin Jischke Drive, is expected in 2013. VOSS will be added in 2014 with spiral walkways and a model of the sun standing as much as 30 feet in diameter, while Saturn will be 4 feet and Earth 6 inches. Each planet will be lighted and suspended from 6-foot-high curved walls. Jeff Laramore teamed with Tom Fansler of Smock Fansler Construction, both of Indianapolis, to be selected as the artists from 10 entries in a national design contest.

Look for more sustainability stories from last night's Overnight News Digest on Daily Kos, as well as completing the other series still unfinished (two posts each in the retrospective on the first year of this blog as well as the student sustainability video festival) coming up this week. Looks like I'll be busy!