Today the White House issued a proclamation that all U.S. flags are to be flown at half staff “as a mark of respect for the memory of Neil Armstrong” on the day of his burial. So, I made a little edit to an image of the flag planted by Armstrong and Aldrin at the Apollo…
Author: Jason Major
Jason is a Rhode Island-based graphic designer, photographer, nature lover, and space exploration fanatic.
First Man on the Moon Neil Armstrong Passes Away at 82
“In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.” — Neil A. Armstrong Today we mourn the loss of a true hero and icon of a generation, if not an…
Curiosity’s Landing Video in Mind-Blowing HD
This is awesome! The full-resolution images taken by Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) instrument have been downloaded and assembled by Luke Fitch into a high-definition video of the rover’s descent and landing on Mars. From the heat shield falling away to the final, dust-blown touchdown in Gale Crater via sky crane, we finally get a…
Curiosity’s Message to Mars
While Curiosity is definitely loaded up with some of the most high-tech instruments ever made to investigate the surface of Mars, it also carries one very low-tech instrument: a sundial, which can be used to determine the position of the Sun in the sky and the season on Mars — just like they do here…
Voyager’s Visit to Uranus
Voyager 2 may have been the second of NASA’s twin exploration spacecraft but it launched first, 35 years ago today on August 20, 1977. 8 1/2 years later it became the first (and last!) spacecraft to visit the gas giant Uranus, the third largest planet in the Solar System.
A Lomographic Look at Mount Sharp
Looking like an old photograph of a Western U.S. landscape, this is a view from Curiosity’s acquired on August 18 (UTC) with the rover’s right Navcam. I colored the image using some of Curiosity’s previous color shots for reference, and adjusted the curves quite a bit from the original to bring out some contrast. The…
An MSL Panorama from Gale Crater
Here’s a panoramic view of the mountainous rim of Gale Crater, as seen by Curiosity’s left Mastcam on 8/9/2012. The image is assembled from 5 raw subsampled images. Gale Crater is about 96 miles (154 km) wide and estimated to be around 3.8 billion years old. Want to see more of this view? Click here,…
Flying Saucers Over Mars!
It might not be a UFO per se but it’s definitely a flying disk from another planet — except in this case the other planet is Earth! This image, a high-resolution version of one sent back by Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager on the morning of August 6, shows MSL’s heat shield falling away, allowing the…
Heads Up, Curiosity!
This just in: the latest full-size image from Curiosity shows the rover’s shadow with its “head” extended…. hello, Curiosity! 🙂 The image above was taken with the rover’s left navcam, and also shows its branded plate and cool little Atari-esque “logo”. Awesome! You can see more raw images from Curiosity on the JPL site here….
Goodbye, Earth!
If you haven’t seen this before, you’re probably not alone. It’s a video made from a series of several hundred images acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung past Earth, departing forever on its journey to Mercury on August 2, 2005 — just a day shy of one year after its launch. Many blogs…
New Mars Rover is a Litterbug!
Only two days on Mars and Curiosity has already made a mess! 🙂 The various components from MSL’s descent and landing process have been spotted by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scattered in the vicinity of Curiosity within Gale crater. MSL’s heat shield, parachute, back shell and sky crane (with a very…
Landing on Mars – From a Rover’s Point of View
Ride along with Curiosity as it descends to the surface of Mars in this 4 fps video taken by the rover’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera! These images are low-resolution, the full-res versions will be available at a later date. But still the view during the rover’s harrowing descent, showing the heat shield falling away…
Lights in the Dark 