When you’re talking to spacecraft billions of miles away, you need a powerful voice. And when you’re listening for their faint replies from those same staggering distances, you need an even bigger set of ears. Fortunately, NASA’s Deep Space Network has both — and last week I had the chance to see some of them up close…
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HAWKING: The Intimate Story of Stephen Hawking’s Life
“Come with me and I will tell you the story of how I became who I am.” With those words, spoken through a custom-built computer and software controlled by the faintest movements of his cheek and eye muscles, 72-year-old physicist Stephen Hawking takes us on a journey through his own life. In this, his first…
Fastest, Farthest, First: New Horizons Closing in on Pluto
It’s a journey spanning 85 years and billions of miles: humanity’s first-ever encounter with the dwarf planet system of Pluto and Charon, located in the frozen far reaches of our Solar System where our entire planet is a barely-visible pale blue dot — just a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Launched in 2006,…
This is the World Waving at Saturn
On July 19 did you wave at Saturn as Cassini was aiming its camera back our way? If you did (and if you sent a photo of you waving to JPL, like I did) you’re in this awesome new image, a compilation of 1400 submitted photos from assembled into a mosaic of Earth, a planet-wide…
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…
How Many Stars Can Astronauts See?
Short answer: a lot. Long answer: a real lot… if you include the stars inside the Andromeda galaxy, which is also very visible from space as this recent time-lapse from the ISS shows!
Steve Jobs. He Thought Different.
He thought different than most people. He definitely thought different than most CEOs and most computer programmers. But he didn’t think so different that he lost touch of what people want, of who people are and that, ultimately, his products were by people, for people. That’s why they were so successful, that’s why everyone loves…
Pay a Visit to Vesta
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Here’s a great video released by JPL taking us on a virtual tour of the asteroid Vesta, from the point of view of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. It’s a shape model of Vesta, mapped with actual images acquired by Dawn during its approach and orbit of the 550-km (340-mile)…
Mercury’s Curious Hollows
As part of a wealth of new information presented today by the MESSENGER science team, this image shows the interior of Sander Crater, located within Mercury’s vast Caloris Basin. Areas seen as bright spots in previous lower-resolution images have been revisited by MESSENGER once it entered orbit and began its science mission. The bright areas…
Ripples in the Sky
Here’s something interesting… This Saturday I was looking at some timelapse video from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope’s Cloudcam… those are beautiful in their own right, but really I was interested in seeing if there was any visual of the reentering UARS. After doing some time-zone math, I realized that the satellite would be reentering before it…
Night Moves
After some delays over the weekend, this morning Endeavour lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in what was officially the last nighttime launch of the space shuttle. Watch the video of the liftoff and rocket separation below, recorded from NASA TV. The STS-130 mission carries the Tranquillity module to the International Space Station and the…
“X” Marks the Spot
With a long trail of material streaming out into space one would assume this to be a photo of a comet…but it’s not. Rather, it’s believed to be the result of a collision between two asteroids that produced a weird X-shaped pattern of filaments emanating from a small remnant object. Material from the filaments has…
Lights in the Dark 