March 22nd, 2010

Mission to Mars simulated by 250 days in a sealed environment

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… → Read More

September 3rd, 2009

Tonight's spacewalk is still on even though space junk is headed right for them

I don’t care what you say. Astronauts have balls of steel. They strap themselves onto a rocket, shit in a vacuum, and are risking death by space junk tonight. → Read More

May 16th, 2009

Star Trek was screened on the ISS

Lucky cosmonaut and astronauts. Not only do they get the best corner office view ever, but they also have a legit version of Star Trek downloaded. The three men currently on board the International Space Station received a special copy of the film via NASA and settled into a dark node of the station to enjoy the show yesterday. → Read More

November 25th, 2008

Astronaut's lost tool bag found floating in space

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… → Read More

June 13th, 2008

New spacesuit designs for 2015 moon mission

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… → Read More

May 28th, 2008

Toilet aboard International Space Station is broken

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… → Read More

May 1st, 2008

Behold! The glorious Space Boomerang

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