A Soyuz TMA-03M capsule descended to the steppes of Kazakhstan this morning at 4:14 a.m., returning Expedition 31 crew members Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit and André Kuipers to Earth after 193 days working aboard the Space Station. The dramatic photo above was captured by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, showing the Soyuz vehicle as it parachuted down…
Category: Earth
High-Flying Ice Clouds Spotted From Space
Glowing high-altitude ice clouds were spotted over western Asia by the crew of the International Space Station on June 13 during one of their 16 daily orbits of the planet… the photo above shows the wispy filaments shining brightly in the mesosphere above western Iraq and Uzbekistan. Read the rest of this article here.
A Blue Marble Martini – With Extra Ice
This latest portrait of Earth from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite puts the icy Arctic in the center, showing the ice and clouds that cover our planet’s northern pole. The image you see here was created from data acquired during fifteen orbits of Earth. Read the rest of this article here.
Annular Eclipse Seen From The Moon
The May 20 annular eclipse may have been an awesome sight for skywatchers across many parts of the Earth, but it was also being viewed by a robotic explorer around the Moon! During the event NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter turned its camera to look back home, acquiring several images of the Earth with the Moon’s…
Is Earth Alive?
Proposed by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 70s, the Gaia theory suggests Earth is a self-supporting singular life form, similar to a cell. The theory claims that, rather than being merely a stage upon which life exists, life — in all forms — works to actively construct an Earthly environment in which it can…
Fragile Earth Puts a Century of Climate Change At Your Fingertips
As a follow-up to the previous Wonders of the Universe i-app released by Harper Collins, Fragile Earth brings us back from the farthest reaches of the Universe to our own beautiful blue world, whose surface is rapidly changing due to the effects of human civilization. With Fragile Earth those changes are brought to light with…
How Big is a CME?
This big! The M1.7-class flare that erupted from active region 1461 on Monday, April 16 let loose an enormous coronal mass ejection many, many times the size of Earth — and I for one was glad that our planet was safely tucked out of aim at the time… and 93 million miles away! Read more here.
Aurora Ablaze
A very active Aurora Borealis was photographed by one of the Expedition 30 crew members aboard the International Space Station flying approximately 240 miles above Manitoba, Canada on Jan. 25, 2012. Lake Winnipeg (lower right center) and the major city Winnipeg (bottom center) are easily recognizable in the nighttime scene.
A Daily Dose of Dawn
Here’s a gorgeous view from the International Space Station, taken by the Expedition 30 crew on Feb. 4, 2012 as the station passed into orbital dawn. The greens and reds of the aurora borealis shimmer above Earth’s limb beyond the Station’s solar panels as city lights shine beneath a layer of clouds. Read the rest…
“Zero G and I feel fine… Man, the view is tremendous!”
Those were the words enthusiastically said by astronaut John Glenn as he became the first American to orbit the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962. The photo above was taken by Glenn through the window of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, in which he completed three orbits before splashing down in the Atlantic. Much has changed in…
More ISS Awesomeness!
This just in: new time-lapses from the ISS, by way of the Image Science & Analysis Lab at Johnson Space Center and The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Enjoy! (Descriptions from JSC.)
Temporal Distortion: A Stunning New Time-Lapse by Randy Halverson
Here’s a gorgeous new time-lapse video created by the talented Randy Halverson and featuring a dramatic score by composer Bear McCreary, recently of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead fame. (Can’t see the video above? Watch in HD on Vimeo here.) Breathtaking! Read more about this video below:
Lights in the Dark 