8 months ago
Badass Level = +100,000,000
This seemed so lame to me. He jumped. Ok …
Gravity did all the work getting him down and the control centre people did almost all the work getting him up there. He shoulda got those diving flap things and did some stunts. meh
via messyguess
9 months ago
They used a toothbrush to repair one of mankind’s most ambitious science projects ever.
Astronauts are boss.
Spacewalking Astronaut ‘Touches’ the Sun
In legend, the bright sun was a dazzling temptation for Icarus and so, too, it is for NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who appears to touch our closest star in a photo snapped during a spacewalk this week.
Astronauts Williams and Hoshide spent six hours and 28 minutes working to remove a stuck bolt using improvised tools made from spare parts, including a toothbrush.
via discoverynews
11 months ago
A truly powerful image generates questions.
The incredible night photos and time-lapse movies NASA has been sharing with us provoke questions about our planet. That thin-yellow atmospheric line separating earth from space, for example, that we see in all of the night shots provokes two questions: (1) how thick is this line? and (2) why is this line colored the way it is?
The visible yellow and green/blue capped line represents atmosphere reaching ~100km above the surface of the earth. The colors are not reflected light, and not pollution, but rather are light generated from the components in the atmosphere itself. Yes, the atmosphere gives off its own light, in a chemiluminescent process called “airglow” or “night glow.”
I have written a blog to accompany this video that explains the various colors of “Night Glow” and discusses the Aurora as well. I hope you find this blog a useful companion to understanding what you are seeing.
High Resolution images courtesy of The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center:
eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/
In particular, NASA astronaut Don Pettit has filmed and provided the majority of the available time-lapses. He is one of the explorers that truly understands how important it is for explorers to share the wonder of their experiences through both art and science. May all future explorers follow his lead.
These images were imported into Adobe Lightroom, cropped, rotated, and slightly tweaked. I had two main goals with the edits done in the manner I did them. My first goal was to bring the viewer’s attention to the atmospheric line by focusing the cropping to prominently feature the atmospheric line and the “Airglow.” Secondly, most of the images we see of earth show the planet at the bottom of the frame and space at the top of the frame. To remind the viewer that, in space, the orientation by which you chose to view planets is up to the viewer, I took artistic license with these images to present different ways to view our planet’s movement in space.
Music: “JLTF” by Moby. Permission fromMobyGratis.com
Editing by Alex Rivest, PhD
This film is dedicated to explorers who take pictures that make us ask questions.
These photos offer us a glimpse of Earth from the International Space Station. As the ISS circles Earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour, Flight Engineer Don Pettit takes 30-second exposures with a stock digital camera, then stacks those exposures into single frames that capture 10-15 minutes on the ISS. The rotation is fast enough for long exposures to blur the earth into gilded landing strip beneath a steady rain of stars—a scene I would have never imagined as beautiful before today. Heck, it’s a scene I would have never even imagined before today.
hard to imagine that speed. Being on something going that fast. Must be different in space
via razorshapes
11 months ago
Blastoff
Photograph courtesy DLR
The German Aerospace Center’s unmanned SHEFEX II spacecraft takes off from the Andøya Rocket Range in Norway on June 22. Ten minutes later the 43-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) rocket landed safely west of Spitsbergen, Norway.
As it re-entered the atmosphere, SHEFEX (SHarp Edge Flight EXperiment) endured temperatures over 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 degrees Celsius), and its 300 sensors sent measurement data to a ground station.
“The SHEFEX II flight takes us one step further in the road to developing a space vehicle built like a space capsule but offering the control and flight options of the space shuttle much more cost-effectively,” project manager Hendrik Weihs said in a statement.
via bobbycaputo
1 year ago
Liu Yang, China’s first female astronaut
It might not be a giant step for mankind, but Saturday’s launch of a piloted space capsule known as Shenzhou-9 marks China’s breakthrough into the exclusive club once made up only of the United States and Russia. And as far as womankind is concerned, there is another first. One of the three astronauts in the capsule is a woman, 33-year-old Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman in space.
via thekhooll
1 year ago
On June 5, 2012, Venus will pass across the face of the sun, producing a silhouette that no one alive today will likely see again.
Transits of Venus are very rare, coming in pairs separated by more than a hundred years. This June’s transit, the bookend of a 2004-2012 pair, won’t be repeated until the year 2117. Fortunately, the event is widely visible. Observers on seven continents, even a sliver of Antarctica, will be in position to see it.
via kenobi-wan-obi
NASA to Reveal Hubble Discovery of Milky Way’s Violent Fate
Figure: Galactic Cannibalism of two galaxies that wandered too close to each other’s orbit.
NASA will reveal new discoveries about the violent fate of our Milky Way galaxy on Thursday (May 31), the space agency has announced.
NASA will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) Thursday at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Scientists will discuss new Hubble Space Telescope findings about the inevitable crash of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, which will occur billions of years from now.
“Because of uncertainties in Andromeda’s motion, it has not been possible to determine whether the Milky Way will have a head-on collision or glancing blow with the neighboring galaxy billions of years in the future,” NASA officials said in a media alert Friday (May 25). “Hubble’s precise observations will settle this question.”
completely and utterly irrelevant to us. lol
via kenobi-wan-obi
1 year ago
1 year ago
Pulsar
A fast-spinning, highly magnetized neutron star, formed (in most cases) following a supernova explosion, that sends out regular directional pulses of radiation as it rotates.
via the-star-stuff
1 year ago
1 year ago
NASA has just released these truly delicious 64-megapixel photos of our lovely planet.
The images weigh in at a lofty 8000x8000 pixels. We can almost make out the Photojojo office!
NASA’s64 Megapixel Photos of Earth
[See it full size]
via photojojo
1 year ago
Earth HD| Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS (by xRobG)
our little planet
via paradojaestimulante-deactivated
1 year ago
The Heavy Bombardment
The first several hundred million years of Earth history was characterised by an unending rain of meteorites, protoplanetary fragments and comet nuclei. It is thought that the impact of comets, rich in water ice, may have helped with the development of Earth’s oceans.
cool story, bro. I think it was the ancients that did it though
via the-star-stuff
1 year ago
areg:
Wernher von Braun by the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage at the US Space and Rocket Center
via areg
