Well, son, I know you wanted to go to the moon and all, but it looks like that’s just not going to happen. In the meantime, I guess you’ll just have to be satisfied with a sojourn on the International Space Station. It seems that Bush’s moon initiative kind of fell through, and Obama and his advisors have decided not to throw good money after bad. Instead, they’re putting $6bn into extending the life of the ISS and encouraging private spaceflight. Still sounds good to me. → Read More
Astronauts aboard the ISS received a special software upgrade earlier this week, according to a NASA statement released moments ago: personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the “ultimate wireless connection”.
This personal Web access, called the Crew Support LAN, takes advantage of existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and use the Web. The system basically provides astronauts with direct private communications. Twitter! → Read More
If you just so happen to be in the market for a second hand space craft, NASA has a deal for you, pal. The Space Shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour are currently for sale with a price tag of $28.2 m each. Just think, you could park one of these bad boys in your trailer park and relieve its glory days. It’s probably best that you take the shuttle to a qualified space ship mechanic before you commit though. The last thing you wanna do is drop that kind of cash on a lemon. → Read More
Believe it or not, the current plan for the International Space Station is to abandon it in 2015 and let it crash into the atmosphere in 2016. Sad, right? But the ESA wants to keep it flying for a few more years to allow more scientist access to the zero-gravity labs. → Read More
Look at the photo above. Doesn’t it look like rolling hills adorned with patches of trees? Well, it’s not. That’s a picture of Mars taken by the HiRISE, the most powerful camera sent to another planet, and the tree looking things are really just illusions. NASA says that they are just trails of debris left over from ice melt landslides and we can probably believe the agency. → Read More
Someone call Bruce Willis. Russia announced Wednesday that they are considering launching a spacecraft with the intention of altering its possibly earth-crushing trajectory to a less threatening one. → Read More
So, big problem with flying in a helicopter: if you crash, you’re screwed. It’s not like a jet, where you can eject (for obvious reasons), and it’s not like helicopters are designed with a crumple zone. For this reason, NASA has been testing a possible solution that utilizes an airbag-type system. → Read More
Well, well. It looks like the Moon bombing went well as NASA just released a whole lot of data supporting the initial findings that there’s water on the Moon. Read NASA’s take and view a whole lot of line graphs I don’t understand at NASA.gov. Next up, moonQuest DSV. → Read More
Ready to lose 20 minutes of your day? → Read More
Just a few minutes ago at 7:13:19 AM EDT, NASA crashed a probe into the Moon at 5,600 MPH with the hope of finding water. BOOM!
NASA broadcasted the entire thing live on its TV station and online, but if you missed our previous post and just learned about the event, you probably didn’t catch it. However, the NASA geeks are currently analyzing the LCROSS data and will hopefully announces their findings at the 10 AM EDT scheduled press event. In the mean time, go tell your wackjob neighbor that the Moon is still in the same ol’ spot and there isn’t a conspiracy to mess with the tides. Crazies. Gotta love ‘em. → Read More
Be sure to set your alarm clock for around 6am this Friday, for at 6:15am NASA will, in the immortal words of Matt Drudge, “bomb the moon.” No, we’re not talking about some dumb Hollywood (redundancy alert!) scenario, but the most exciting part of the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) program: the lunar impact. → Read More
For only $22,500 you can own the robotic hand shown in the video above. That’s nothing for a piece of NASA history. This impressive early prototype demands an important place within robotics history as the first motorized dexterous robotic hand. It represents one of the early steps towards making robots more anthropomorphic. The Omni-Hand was designed and built in the early 1990s by robot pioneer Mark Rosheim with funding from NASA contracts NAS8-37638 and NAS8-38417. Two prototypes were made. The first was a “test bed” whose features were then incorporated into this complete unit. Both had the same power and control system. → Read More
Apparently you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to help NASA. The space agency just posted a request for suggestions for future prize contests on their website, and anyone may submit an idea. → Read More
East Coasters, did you see any weird clouds Saturday night? Some people did as the event caused reports and calls from Boston all the way down the coast to Florida. But you have nothing to fear, the aliens from Independence Day didn’t make them, NASA did. → Read More
The LRO has already provided us with a lot of fascinating high-res photos of the Moon’s surface. But photos are just the start.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also has more instruments aboard and one of them, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer developed and operated by the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is sending back some wild info about the Moon’s surface temperature. → Read More
Microgravity researchers at NASA have used a superconducting magnet that generated a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside a mouse, effectively simulating weightlessness for the rodents, right here on earth! The first floating mouse didn’t seem very happy about the ordeal, so subsequent tests involved sedating the test mice. As should be expected, the doped up mice had a much better time floating around. → Read More
It’s laptops in space, people! What is there not to like? → Read More
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