Your Country Needs You
I've blogged about my fascination with Space Exploration before in Thank God we chose to go to the Moon so you can imagine my excitement when I got a call last week from Professor H. Wolff at the newly formed UK Space Agency saying words to the effect that "Your country needs you".
In a nutshell what Prof Wolff wanted to know was whether Cloudsoft was prepared to go where no other Cloud company had gone before and sponsor a mission to explore our Local Interstellar Cloud or as it is rather quaintly called our Local Fluff.
Roughly 30 light years across, this is the interstellar cloud through which the Solar System is currently moving. The Solar System entered the Local Fluff at some time between 44,000 and 150,000 years ago and is expected to remain within it for another 10,000 to 20,000 years.
I was sceptical at first but Prof Wolff quickly convinced me he was serious. It's the usual small world stuff - Heinz is on the same advisory board as one of our long term collaborators Prof Al Dearle. (As an avid fan of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I should have expected something like this, I guess.)
Cloudsoft Goes Galactic
Fast forward to yesterday and we put pen to paper (or in my case electronically signed a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8) and Cloudsoft Galactic was born.
As a result I can officially reveal that Cloudsoft's Monterey Platform is set to become an integral part of Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) 2.0, a new NASA satellite scheduled for launch on November 11, 2011. IBEX 2.0 is the successor to the original IBEX, a NASA satellite which has been in orbit for about 18 months and is the first to map of the boundary between the Solar
System and interstellar space. The IBEX mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and should complete its observation of the
entire solar system boundary in about 6 months.
Cloudsoft Galactic is working very working closely with teams from the Southwest Research Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center.
A Very British Twist - Not 'Arf
In a peculiarly British twist to this story, IBEX 2.0 will carry a small phial containing the ashes of Alan Leslie "Fluff" Freeman, MBE.
Once in earth orbit, a ceremony reminiscent of the Gene Roddenberry / Timothy Leary Space Burial will be broadcast on Steve Wright's eponymous BBC Radio 2 show in December 2011.
It's not clear whether this is a one-off or part of a longer term plan to position the UK Space Agency as the market leader in space burial services.
How cool is that? I will leave the last word to the Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud.
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