Someone call Pauly Shore, because there’s a new closed environment that’ll need his madcap hijinks to stave off boredom and no doubt save the day. The Mars500 project, located in Moscow, hopes to simulate the experience of a manned mission to Mars. It’s the mission to part that they’re testing, and not the actual Mars part. It takes a long time to get to Mars, and once you start there’s no pitstops. So a lucky group of international astronauts will be working together to see what’s its like to live in 550 cubic meters for the better part of a year. → Read More
You may have heard last week, while withdrawing all your money from Citibank, that an astronaut lost her tool bag while performing a routine space walk. (Late night comics made jokes along the lines of, “Why does she need her pocketbook up there?”) Well, as luck would have, a “veteran space watcher” may have discovered the bag floating around space. In fact, if you’re in the northeast of the U.S. you may able to spot it, too, provided you have a decent telescope. I mean, what could be more exciting than combing the heavens for a bag? ABC News has an un-embeddable video on its site of the bag streaking across. The first comment I say made me laugh, too: We can find a bag floating in space but we can’t find Osama bin Laden? → Read More
It’s a $750,000,000 contract, and this is what they’ve got? Come on, Oceaneering International. You could have whipped up a cool-looking prototype out of surgical tubing and PVC in the time it took to make those artist’s conceptions. The new suits are being developed for the next major moon mission, Constellation. They’re rejiggering everything from the suits to the mode of transportation (bye bye shuttle) and this is the first look at the new space gear. Configuration 1, left, is for takeoff, landing, and occasional spacewalks. Configuration 2, middle, is optimized for walking around on the moon (resistant to moon rocks). Configuration 3, on the right, is for after the moon base is left undisturbed for years and the astronauts revert to savage infighting and genetic modification. [via New Scientist] → Read More
Whuh oh. Seems the only toilet on the ISS is busted and they can’t get a plumber out there until next week. Astronauts aboard the space station have been able to impose upon the nearby Russian Soyuz spacecraft, using its limited-capacity toilet in a pinch, and have now apparently rigged some sort of sack-like contraption to the toilet on the ISS. Sounds delightful. The good news is that the problems are only occurring when going number one. The astronauts can go number two just fine, Lord o’ Mercy. → Read More
Matt tells me this guy has been performing all kinds of semi-trivial experiments like blowing bubblegum bubbles, hitting golf balls of the space station, and now testing the complicated physics involved in boomerangology. I’d say this experiment was a complete and delicious success. [via Pink Tentacle] → Read More
