California Wildfires from Space; Spacewalk

Los Angeles County: 120,000+ acres burned (LA Times/Ricardo DeAratanhha/wusa9)

Astronauts Complete Overnight Spacewalk
Paul McDougall (InformationWeek, 9/2/09)

A pair of astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery changed out a 1,300 pound holding tank from the International Space Station (ISS) during a six and a half hour spacewalk that began Tuesday night and ended Wednesday morning. Astronauts Danny Olivas and Nicole Stott removed the bulky ammonia tank from the ISS and will replace it with a new module during a follow-up spacewalk later in the week. While Olivas and Stott worked out in space, station crewmembers were busy transferring 7.5 tons of cargo, including an exercise device named after comedian Stephen Colbert, from Discovery to the ISS. More>>

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California Wildfires from Space

Robert Mackey (The Lede, NY Times)

Smoke from California wildfires captured on Sunday by NASA’s Terra satellite. The Station Fire began last week in the Angeles National Forest just above the city, close to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team).

• Fire official: Giant LA wildfire was human-caused (PHOTOS)

As my colleagues Randal Archibold and Sharon Otterman report, firefighters in California are still trying to get wildfires that started last week under control. On Monday, The Lede pointed to several views of the fires posted online. On Tuesday, the Web site Space Fellowship drew our attention to the photograph posted above, which is a view of the fires from space. This image was recorded on Sunday by a satellite camera managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is located in Pasadena, not far from the Angeles National Forest where one of the fires started. A larger version of the image is available from JPL... More>>

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