10th Anniversary for ISS

10 years ago today, on 20th November 1998, the first module of the International Space Station, the Russian Zarya module was launched.

At the moment of writing the ISS passes above my head (nearly), and an amateur satellite listener/tracker has strong signals coming down on the S-band (2217.5 MHz).

Since then the ISS has been built up *very* slowly, mainly due to the lots of maintenance of the Space Shuttle fleet, and of course the re-entry failure of Columbia.

Right now the crews of ISS and Endeavor are busy repairing solar panels and installing living quarters for 3 more people, making the ISS ready for what should have been the normal crew of 6.

I am looking forward to seeing the ISS fully operational.

NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo ?

I know one or two people doing the NaNoWriMo ((inter)National Novel Writing Month), attempting to write a novel of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.

Now, that is a too big mouthful for me. However I found some people doing NaBloPoMo ((inter)National Blog Posting Month), attempting to make one blog post per month in November. Now, for me that is something i might find doable. I looked and found that I could easily find 30 subjects for posting, so I will attempt to make, on average, one blog post per day in the month of November. I have not registered but will see how it goes this year.

So please expect a few posts from me in the month of November 😉 .

I know very well that December is a *very* busy month, so do not expect to make the trick in December.