NASA’s venerable Cassini spacecraft may still have another two years left in its exploration of the Saturn system but on Monday, August 17, it had its final intimate visit with Dione, one of Saturn’s largest natural satellites at nearly 700 miles (1,126 km) across. On that day Cassini passed within 300 miles (480 km) of Dione at 2:33 p.m. EDT (18:33…
Month: August 2015
No Asteroids on an Impact Course with Earth, NASA Says
In case you were concerned, there are no large* asteroids, comets, or anything else of a cosmic origin on a destructive collision course with Earth in the foreseeable future – and that most certainly includes this coming September.
Elusive Red Sprite Seen From the Space Station
Let’s take a look back at our own planet for a moment with this stunning photo captured from the Space Station. This shot, taken on the night of Aug. 10, 2015, shows lightning flashes in thunderstorms over southern Mexico. Along the right edge bright red and purple streamers can be seen extending high into the…
Rosetta’s Perihelion-Bound Comet Fires a Fountain Into Space
On July 29, with ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft in orbital tow, the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) -long Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko fired its brightest jet yet since Rosetta’s arrival just over a full year ago, on Aug. 6, 2014. Most of the images of 67P showing jets and outgassing activity released over the past few months have been edited to…
Today in 1966: Lunar Orbiter I Launched to Map our Moon
On August 10, 1966, NASA’s Lunar Orbiter I launched from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas-Agena D rocket, the flagship spacecraft of a program designed to map the Moon and investigate intended landing sites for the planned Apollo landings, including helping determine the risks from micrometeorite and radiation exposure. Over the course of the next twelve months and five…
No This Is Not an Alien Cave Crab on Mars
I’m in a debunking mood today, probably brought on by the seasonal “double Moon hoax” that raises its oh-so-wrong head every August. (Read more on that nonsense here.) So here’s one more thing to say “NO” to: giant alien cave crabs on Mars. Apparently there’d been some buzz recently in the “space woo” circles online…
Mars Will NOT Be As Big As The Moon In The Night Sky
No, no, no…a thousand times NO: Mars will not become a “second Moon” in the sky on August 27. It won’t this year, it didn’t last year, and it didn’t in the past dozen years since this silly yet strangely perennial cyber-legend (yes I just used the prefix “cyber”) first started circulating on teh interwebz. I don’t know…
The Hammer-Feather Drop: Watch Apollo 15 Commander Dave Scott “Do a Science” on the Moon
On August 2, 1971, at the end of the last EVA of the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott took a few minutes to conduct a classical science experiment in front of the TV camera that had been set up just outside the LM Falcon at the Hadley Rille landing site. Scott, a former Air…
Lights in the Dark 