The Assembly of Space Shuttle Discovery
posted by grouse on Apr 3, 2008 - 40 comments

A handful of pretty great spacewalk pix from last summer's Endeavour mission.
posted by CunningLinguist on Mar 19, 2008 - 59 comments

The NASA Centennial Challenges: Inspired by the X-Prize, NASA has begun a series of challenges to private inventors with cash prizes for things ranging from extracting oxygen from moon rocks to building better astronaut gloves to improving personal aircraft. Thanks to Congressional approval, NASA will be launching larger challenges of up to $50 million in value, including a new multi-million dollar lunar lander contest. With government space efforts criticized by private entrepreneurs, is this the right direction for NASA?
posted by blahblahblah on May 6, 2006 - 12 comments

Catch NASA's solar capsule!
Via B3ta
posted by Mwongozi on Sep 10, 2004 - 13 comments

From Genesis to Apocalypse: one more threat to NASA's pure research funding.
posted by luriete on Sep 8, 2004 - 6 comments

Enter the Robonaut. A truly science-fictioney NASA robot. (Note DARPA.)
posted by kablam on May 23, 2004 - 12 comments

Robert "Moose" Cobb's new job --Under fire for its handling of postwar contracts in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to appoint NASA's inspector general to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to oversee investigations of any alleged abuses. Cobb was Associate Presidential Counsel for Bush and before that spent nine years as a career attorney with the Office of Government Ethics. His appointment was seen as a bid by the administration to counter criticism -- mostly from Democrats in Congress -- that oversight of multibillion-dollar contracts has been lax. So can a guy who worked in the Bush White House actually be trusted to objectively investigate abuses? And if the Pentagon is auditing all of this, why use this guy? (and can the Pentagon objectively investigate this stuff either?)
posted by amberglow on Dec 15, 2003 - 16 comments

NASA thinks we can find another Earth in another nearby star. When we do, how can we possibly travel light-years to get there? It might not be as hard as you'd think . . .
posted by stbalbach on Aug 17, 2003 - 31 comments

Did downsizing and inexperience lead to Columbia's destruction? In the rush to cut costs and 'downsize' NASA in the 1990s the agency outsourced most Space Transportation System (STS, or the Shuttle) functions to a private consortium called United Space Alliance. Now, senior engineers at Boeing (lead member of the USA) are beginning to talk about the lack of experience, 'brain drain', and negative effects of downsizing and privatization. This begs the issue of market imperatives, relative value of privatization and the question of how to better manage projects of this magnitude in a mixed private/public arrangement.
posted by tgrundke on Feb 23, 2003 - 3 comments

Houston we have a problem! At 9:00am EST communication was lost with space shuttle Columbia. The touch down should have been occurred at 9:16am.
posted by MzB on Feb 1, 2003 - 450 comments

Shuttle Views the Earth: Geology from Space. Also see the Human Imprints set. [via milov]
posted by riffola on Nov 27, 2002 - 5 comments

The engine canna take any more, captain! So, we're going to ground the fleet. I guess our friends in the space station are just going to have to wait until NASA is done checking under the hood.
posted by dwivian on Jun 25, 2002 - 6 comments

NASA Tentatively OKs Second Space Tourist "NASA and its partners in the International Space Station have agreed in principle to let a 28-year-old South African become the second paying tourist on the orbiting outpost, the U.S. space agency said on Tuesday." Mark Shuttleworth you lucky bastard!
posted by dgeiser13 on Dec 11, 2001 - 8 comments

The romance versus the reality of man in space. According to this article, unless NASA gets an innoculation of a whole bunch of money, we are likely to be limited to maintaining no more than three longterm residents of the space station we are committed to building. How does this bode for our Star Trek vision?
posted by MAYORBOB on Dec 5, 2001 - 18 comments

Sattelite Pics of NY, here is a bigger one
posted by zeoslap on Sep 12, 2001 - 3 comments

NASA raises funds through photographing vineyards. 5 bucks an acre? That's probably a pretty good price for both sides.
posted by meep on Aug 31, 2001 - 3 comments

$145 million in a search for evidence of Big Bangs! So far the popular vote indicates most are in favor of the spending--whatever the cnn data is worth. Am I the only one who'd prefer it spent on my undergrad work, or even biosciences research?
posted by greyscale on Jul 1, 2001 - 21 comments

No longer Lost in Space. But I wonder: how much longer before a Romulan warship collides with it?
posted by legibility on Apr 30, 2001 - 17 comments

Zooooom in from space! Very cool views of our planet
posted by owillis on Apr 20, 2001 - 14 comments

New York to LA in under 20 minutes?
With a cruising speed of 11,500 Km/h , NASA unveils a new plane designed to be world's fastest... Fasten your, um, seatbelts please.
posted by murray_kester on Apr 19, 2001 - 14 comments

Millionaire space tourist rebuffed by NASA. Russian cosmonauts walk away in protest. I find the NASA decision disappointing. I wonder how the rest of the World will react? NASA's approval ratings could be better.
posted by quirked on Mar 20, 2001 - 5 comments

All your spaceship are belong to LEEIF. Someone stole the source code to the guidance package for the US space program, including GPS. Tomorrow Never Dies, anyone?
posted by OneBallJay on Mar 2, 2001 - 7 comments

NASA admits "Dreaming isn't our job, anymore."

<sigh> We're never going to get off this planet. Crap.
posted by baylink on Mar 2, 2001 - 29 comments

This picture of the Space Shuttle and the ray of "shadow" from the moon is pretty cool. I even think I buy the explanation.
posted by aflakete on Feb 19, 2001 - 15 comments

Mission To Mars What if we could get there in about two weeks?
posted by Skot on Feb 1, 2001 - 21 comments

please lord, make it stop--- just a little quote from red meat. i was looking up the times for the last eclipse of the millenium and thot i'd share. view at your own risk (%*)
posted by ethylene on Dec 24, 2000 - 0 comments

Momentus occasion ignored. Well, mostly, or at least buried in the inner pages of most major U.S. pages. Isn't this sort of more important than the Knicks and Nets loosing their opening games? You wouldn't think so, since those stories were carried on the front pages on newspapers in the Northeast while this one was back on page 14 between two full page ads.
posted by rich on Nov 2, 2000 - 12 comments

Take a good long look at NASA, webcams of stuff that's actually cool!
posted by starduck on May 4, 2000 - 0 comments

The Shuttle Endeavour launched earlier today and thanks to those rocket scientists at NASA, you can see the exact part of the world they are flying over, right now.
posted by mathowie on Feb 11, 2000 - 0 comments

Here's the direct link to live video from the Mars Lander which should be broadcasting images from the Mars surface later today. You can find more info and perhaps higher quality archived feeds at the main Mars Lander site.
posted by mathowie on Dec 3, 1999 - 2 comments