Busy day in space

There's a lot going on over our heads...

Atlantis just returned safely to earth, well ahead of the U.S.S. Lake Erie now poised in the Pacific to to shoot down a spy satellite tonight, if conditions are favourable. This will effectively be the first "live fire" test of the U.S.'s missile defense system and is expected to take place between 9:30 p.m. and midnight EST somewhere over Hawaii.

Edit: Stormy conditions in the Pacific make it unlikely the satellite will be shot down tonight. The window of opportunity for the Navy to shoot the satellite down ends on February 29th or 30th.

Meanwhile, on the east coast, we will see, weather permitting, a total lunar eclipse. The moon should enter the umbral shadow about 8:43 p.m. EST, and will gradually become eclipsed over the next 78 minutes. The moon will then begin to emerge from the umbral shadow about 12:09 a.m. EST. The moon will appear red during the eclipse, but the exact shade will depend on the amount of atmospheric particulate matter. Below is a handy graphic of when the eclipse will occur in different regions across North America. Those in Europe and Africa will need to stay up until 1:43 a.m. GMT Thursday morning to catch the show.

News: Fidel Castro steps down

Fidel Castro has announced that he is giving up his presidency, leaving the door open for a new Cuban leader. His 76 year old brother Raul has been postulated as a successor, but that is not certain. Castro has been the leader of Cuba since 1959. Found on Slashdot.

Free books online

Several science fiction and fantasy writers are placing stories online.

Steven Brust has turned his hand to writing an authorized Firefly novel. You can find it at DreamCafe, and it's available in both PDF and Word formats. I haven't yet had a chance to take a look at it.

Neil Gaiman just ran a poll on his blog to determine which of his novels would be offered for free by Harper-Collins next month. American Gods won out as the novel fans selected as the one they would give to a person who had never read nay of Gaiman's work before. The book, one of about 100 Harper-Collins will be making freely available, will only be up for a month so you'll need to act fast when it becomes available. Apparently you can't download them so they are meant to be read online.

Baen has taken a different route and offered dozens of books from a variety of authors, both known and unknown, for free with no time limit.


Of course, all this ignores the many books that have long been available for free from places like Project Gutenberg.