Year: 2019

Categories
Chandrayaan Uncrewed Spaceflight

India’s Vikram lunar lander falls silent

  • September 6, 2019

Chandrayaan-2 and VikramIndia’s mission to safely put a lander and an autonomous rover on the surface of the moon ends with a sudden loss of data. Deployed by the successful Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, the Vikram lander (carrying the Pragyan rover) begins a powered descent to the lunar surface, only to cease communicating with ground controllers in India at an altitude of 2.1 kilometers. With the speed of Vikram’s descent at the time of data loss measured at 60 meters per second via telemetry, ground controllers declare it likely that Vikram crashed into the moon, resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload, a fate somewhat similar to that of the Israel-launched Beresheet lander earlier in the year. The orbiter continues to function, and will search for signs of water ice at the south pole of the moon.

Categories
theLogBook.com Podcasts

Retrogram #7130/7131: Apollo 15, Part 2

  • September 28, 2019

RetrogramtheLogBook.com releases the 11th episode of the Retrogram podcast, hosted by Earl Green, covering the following shows from the weeks of July 25th and August 1st, 1971:

  • Ace Of Wands: Seven Serpents, Sulphur, And Salt Episode 2
  • Ace Of Wands: Seven Serpents, Sulphur, And Salt Episode 3

This episode had been released at an earlier date to the site’s Patreon supporters.

More about the Retrogram podcast here

Categories
Apollo-Soyuz Crewed Spaceflight Voskhod

Alexei Leonov, the world’s first spacewalker, dies

  • October 11, 2019

Alexei LeonovCosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first human being to perform extravehicular activity (or, as it has become more commonly known, a spacewalk) outside his spacecraft, dies at the age of 85. He was among the 20 Soviet Air Force pilots selected to undergo cosmonaut training in 1960, and undertook the historic first spacewalk on March 18th, 1965, aboard the Voskhod 2 mission. He remained outside the vehicle for twelve minutes, but due to his spacesuit inflating with the pressure of his breathing oxygen, he had severe difficulty climbing back into the tunnel that extended from the vehicle itself for his exit, leading mission controllers in Russia to consider the possibility that he might perish without being able to climb back in. He was able to re-enter the Voskhod capsule with considerable effort, and became a favorite among Soviet-era mission planners for the honor of being the first cosmonaut to set foot on the moon, but crewed Soviet lunar missions never came to fruition as the Apollo moon shots took the lead in the space race. Leonov was later selected to lead the Soyuz 19 mission, the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975. He was also an avid artist who drew and painted many of his own space experiences, as well as those related to him by other astronauts and cosmonauts.

Categories
Deaths Matters of Life & Death Movies

Robert Forster, actor, dies

  • October 11, 2019

Robert Forster in The Black HoleActor Robert Forster, a fixture in films and TV since the 1960s, dies at the age of 78 following a brief battle with brain cancer. Cult sci-fi fans may know him best as Captain Dan Holland in 1979‘s The Black Hole or for his regular role in Heroes, but Forster’s credits spanned over 100 movies, the last of which – the Breaking Bad epilogue film El Camino – debuted on Netflix on the day he died. (An appearance in an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories revival would not premiere until after Forster’s death.) He was the lead in two early 1970s series, Banyon and Nakia, and received an Oscar nomination (and an unexpected resurgence of his career) for his role in Qunetin Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown. He went on to play regular roles in such series as Karen Sisco, The Grid, Alcatraz, Last Man Standing, and the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks.

Categories
Deaths Matters of Life & Death Movies Radio & Audio Television

Stephen Moore, actor, dies

  • October 11, 2019

Stephen MooreActor Stephen Moore, who originated the woeful voice of Marvin the Android in the original 1978 BBC Radio production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, dies at the age of 81. Ironically, it was another voice role, in a Czechoslovakian-made production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1959, featuring only puppets, that started Moore’s screen career. He would later go on to play memorable roles in Rock Follies, The New Avengers, Solo, and The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole. In 2010, he appeared as a war-weary Silurian elder opposite Matt Smith in the Doctor Who episode Cold Blood. Having played Marvin’s voice on radio in 1978 and 1979, and reprising the role for the 1981 BBC2 TV adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide, Moore returned to play Marvin again in BBC Radio’s early 21st century adaptations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels that weren’t directly based on the original radio series.

Categories
Arrowverse (DC) Television

Arrow: Starling City

  • October 15, 2019

ArrowThe 161st episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Susanna Thompson (Star Trek: Voyager) and John Barrowman (Torchwood, Doctor Who) guest star in the season eight premiere.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Categories
Television

For All Mankind (The Series)

  • November 1, 2019

For All MankindStreaming service Apple TV debuts episodes one, two and three of Ronald D. Moore’s fictional alternate history of the American space program, For All Mankind. Based on the premise of a rapid acceleration of the Apollo program after the Soviet Union places the first man on the moon, the series stars Joel Kinnaman (Altered Carbon, Robocop, Suicide Squad), Michael Dorman (Patriot), and Sarah Jones (Alcatraz, Damnation). Colm Feore (Chicago, Thor) guest stars. Though covering some of the same subject matter (Apollo missions to the moon), this series is unrelated to the well-regarded 1989 documentary movie of the same name.

More about For All Mankind in the LogBook

Categories
Star Wars Television

The Mandalorian: Chapter 1

  • November 12, 2019

The MandalorianStreaming service Disney+ opens for business with the first episode of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, the first live-action TV series set in the Star Wars universe, starring Pedro Pascal, Carl Weathers, and Nick Nolte. Returning to the saga’s roots as a space western, this marks Disney’s entrance into the increasingly crowded premium streaming service race.

More about The Mandalorian in the LogBook
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Categories
Hayabusa Uncrewed Spaceflight

Hayabusa-2 now departing Ryugu

  • November 13, 2019

RyuguJapan’s Hayabusa-2 uncrewed spacecraft, carrying samples of material from asteroid 162173 Ryugu, begins its long trip home after spending nearly a year and a half in Ryugu’s orbit, where it deposited autonomous robotic landers and fired a projectile into Ryugu’s surface to loosen material for capture and return to Earth. First launched in 2014, Hayabusa-2’s return trajectory to Earth is expected to bring the samples of asteroid material home to a safe landing in Australia in late 2020.