Saw this beauty on my way out the door to start the weekend..   It is a bit old – Oct 2011- but still awesome to watch the beast fly in and out of the deck of a floating pad.. Description (as shown in the video below): the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing variant completed ship suitability testing aboard the USS WASP (LHD-1) off the coast of Virginia in October 2011. Combined, F-35B test aircraft BF-2 and BF-4 accomplished 72 short takeoffs and 72 vertical landings during the three-week testing period.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki86x1WKPmE&hd=1′]

On a related note, if you are an aviation/space enthusiast, there is a good reason why you should be up early on Sunday .. This weekend is you get to see the launch of the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services-1 (CRS-1) mission. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon Capsule is scheduled for 8:35 p.m. EDT on Sunday. Launch coverage will begin at 7 p.m. on NASA Television and http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. On Saturday, NASA TV will air an International Space Station Science Briefing at 3 p.m. and the SpaceX CRS-1 Prelaunch News Conference at 6 p.m. Have fun!

Related articles

• Space Station-Bound SpaceX Dragon Capsule Gets Mission Patch
• NASA, SpaceX try to get a groove going with Sunday launch to International Space Station
• Dragon Readies for Operational Delivery Flight

Source: Gizmodo.com

Remember when those two satellites collidedthe other day? Seems that they’ll be thespace junk gift that keeps on giving, as their 800-km debris orbiting field could hamper allfuture space launches.

“Future launches will have to be adjusted with regard to the fact that the debris [from the collision] has spread over an 800-km area and will gather at a common orbit in 5-6 years,” said Alexander Stepanov, director of the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg.

Click here to read the entire article.