SMAP, HST, ISS
Taken by Tom Harradine on May 28, 2015 @
Brisbane, Australia
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Date Taken: 2015:05:28 20:50:17
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Details:
It's pretty amazing what you see in the sky - even if you think you know what you are seeing in the sky! The Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station were predicted to cross paths within a minute of each other tonight over Brisbane. On reviewing the video I took of them I noticed a flashing object heading north. Normally this would be caused by a tumbling piece of space junk or an out of control satellite. Curious, I looked up what it was and which learned that it was actually an new NASA satellite that was confirmed operational only a couple of days ago - SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive). It has a 6-metre wide gold plated mesh radar reflector that spins about 4 times a minute and can detect the water content of soil on Earth. The "flashing" in the video is caused by the variable angle the spinning dish presents to the Sun and matches quite well with the period of the satellite. The picture I have attached here is a stack of each of the 0.4sec long video frames taken of the satellites. This image is a pretty rare view of three kinds of laboratories/observatories in one shot. One that looks at Earth, one that looks out to the stars, and one that looks at how we ourselves relate to the space environment.
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