"Tubes of space borscht are on sale in the museum gift shop. “There are white and black tubes. On the white is written: ‘BLONDE.’ On black one: ‘BRUNETTE.’ "
Astronauts relate challenges of
life in space.
posted by ambient2
on Aug 2, 2010 -
17 comments
On July 17th, NASA's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite
completed its first survey of the entire sky viewable from Earth. After just seven months in orbit, WISE -- a precursor to the planned
James Webb Space Telescope -- has returned more than a million images that provide a close look at
celestial objects ranging from
distant galaxies to
asteroids. The first release of WISE data, covering about 80 percent of the sky,
will be delivered to the astronomical community in May of next year, but in the meantime we can see some of the images and animations that NASA has released to date: Galleries
(containing just a small selection of images):
1,
2,
3,
4. Videos and Animations:
1,
2 [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 24, 2010 -
11 comments
Last year, high school science teacher Ron Dantowitz of Brookline, Mass., played a clever trick on three of his best students. He asked them to plan a hypothetical mission to fly onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft and observe a spacecraft disintegrate as it came screaming into Earth's atmosphere. For 6 months, they worked hard on their assignment, never suspecting the surprise Dantowitz had in store.
On March 12th, he stunned them with the news: "The mission is real, and you're going along for the ride."
posted by Burhanistan
on Jun 26, 2010 -
50 comments
MOONWALK ONE - A surprisingly groovy look at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in a full length documentary that contains a lot of rare and not often seen footage of the preparations and launch of the first manned mission to the moon. Warning: Also contains lots of theramins, trippy optical effects, faux bohemians and some really blowy narrative.
posted by loquacious
on Apr 23, 2010 -
22 comments
Return to the moon?
Not likely. "President Barack Obama is essentially grounding efforts to return astronauts to the moon...".
posted by deacon_blues
on Jan 28, 2010 -
179 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
On October 9th, NASA spacecraft will run into the moon, and on purpose. The
Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (
LCROSS) and its rocket's
Centaur upper stage will impact the moon, with the goal of sending some of the (possibly present) ice above the lunar surface. Once out of the eternal shade of the moon's south pole, sunlight will break the ice up into H+ and OH- molecules, which can be detected by the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (
LRO). The
initial impact site was the crater Cabeus A, but the target was
later changed to Cabeus (proper), selected for highest hydrogen concentrations with the greatest level of certainty, and for the high-contrast back drop to detect ejecta and vapor measurements. NASA has provided
guides for amateur observations of the impact,
a facebook group, and
a Twitter feed so you don't miss the moment.
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 8, 2009 -
53 comments
Last Tuesday,
The Augstine Commission - an independent council created earlier this year to study NASA's human spaceflight objectives -
released their findings. While many are responding to the report's grim findings on NASA's budget woes, former aerospace engineer
Rand Simberg has a criticism of his own: "If our attitude toward the space frontier is that we must strive to never, ever lose anyone, it will remain closed. If our ancestors who opened the west, or who came from Europe, had such an attitude, we would still be over there, and there would have been no California space industry to get us to the moon forty years ago.
It has never been 'safe' to open a frontier, and this frontier is the harshest one that we've ever faced."
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
on Sep 12, 2009 -
104 comments
Astronaut Michael Collins –
"I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied."
posted by miss lynnster
on Jul 28, 2009 -
60 comments
Once dubbed the Picture of the Century, the first
Earthrise, photographed in 1966 by NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1, presented "a stunning juxtaposition of planet and moon that no earthling had ever seen before." After initially inspiring awe, the original image was almost destroyed. In the mad rush of the space race, the pictures and data from early missions were warehoused and forgotten. Many at NASA believed that the original high-resolution images, stored on fragile tapes that could only be read by obsolete equipment, would be nearly impossible to retrieve, but
one woman was determined to see them restored.
Via.
posted by amyms
on Mar 26, 2009 -
37 comments
Tonight NASA is scheduled to launch the
Kepler Mission (named after planetary legislator
Johannes Kepler) with the goal of finding Earth size planets in orbit around stars in the
Cygnus-Lyra region of the sky. Over the next 3 and a half years it will maintain a nearly unblinking gaze on the approximately 100 thousand stars in the region. NASA expects it to find about
50 Earth size planets, as well as hundreds that are larger. You can watch the launch live on
NASA TV.
[more inside]
posted by borkencode
on Mar 6, 2009 -
42 comments
