Rocket launch successful, dead frog - Spiegel Online

wrong place at the wrong time in the past week was a little frog on Wallops Iceland before the U.S. East Coast. The amphibian had a stain chosen as shelter, which is more than just a pond: it serves as a protective pool of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the U.S. space agency Nasa. With the water, the rollout of the missile base to be protected from the great forces start the engines, so shall also the starting noise are attenuated.

Unfortunately, the basin also attracts water animals. And so it was that at least one frog was a bit too close to the action, as last Saturday, the immense forces of “Minotaur V” rocket NASA probe “Ladee” catapulted into the air. The force of the drive, the animal was drawn back into the air. One of the remote camera of NASA, the launches of space missions generally perpetuate in many recordings, the recording of unusual frog made in addition to the approximately 30-meter rocket.

the involuntary “Frogonaut” was already sent around the Internet before it was clear whether the image is real. A spokesman for Nasa has now confirmed this now.

“Ladee” to solve mystery of moon dust

The launch of “Ladee” was eagerly awaited. The probe is designed to solve a riddle that had arisen with the return of the last manned mission to the moon to the earth. Shortly before sunrise, the astronauts of the “Apollo 17″ crew was a gentle glow noticed on the moon high above the surface: It looked as if the sunlight illuminate small particles in the atmosphere of the moon. But how could that be – but where the moon has no atmosphere

?

To decipher this mystery, the American space agency Nasa now sent “Ladee” (for “Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer”) into space. Many viewers in the U.S. East Coast watched the nightly start, he was also broadcast live on the Internet and among other things on a screen at New York’s Times Square. The tail light in the sky was also shown to the metropolis.

around 250 million dollars (about 190 million euros) expensive “Ladee” mission was special for many reasons: The Spaceport on Wallops Iceland is only a Nasa branch, the launcher of the type “Minotaur V” has never been been used for space missions. In addition, the rocket, the private company had supplied orbital, which was responsible for last two false starts.

way: the unfortunate amphibian from Wallops Iceland is not the only frog with aerospace experience. 2001 sent the German Aerospace Center (DLR) several frog tadpoles for ten days on the International Space Station. Researchers at the University of Ulm wanted that examine the effect of weightlessness on the swimming behavior and the balance organ of the animals.

In 1993 Frog “Manni” was flown with 149 other tadpoles aboard a U.S. space shuttles into space. It also went to basic research on early brain and ear development. Most animals then died in the service of science. Only the amphibious spaceman “Manni” and three of his cousins ??lived and developed at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne. They were originally intended for further experiments in space, but it was due to budget cuts then nothing.

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