Yes, we really landed 12 men on the Moon from 1969-1972. Get over it.
Tag: NASA
Hubble Spots Saturn’s Northern Lights
Earth isn’t the only planet with auroras — any world with a magnetic field and an atmosphere can get a light show around its poles when its star’s wind is blowing hard enough!* The image above shows Saturn’s northern lights, as seen in ultraviolet light by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in…
Book Review: “Earthrise” by Apollo 14 Astronaut Ed Mitchell
To date only 12 humans have ever set foot on the surface of the Moon. Ed Mitchell is one of them… and thisĀ is the story of how he got there and what it was like when he did. (Now that’s a claim not many authors can make!) Earthrise: My Adventures as an Apollo 14 Astronaut…
This is How Saturn’s Rings Would Look to a Butterfly
You don’t typically see Saturn’s rings looking like this, but then you can’t see in ultraviolet like Cassini (or many insects) can! The image above was acquired by the UVIS (UltraViolet Imaging Spectrograph) instrument aboard the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on June 30, 2004, just as it was entering orbit around Saturn. The area shown here is…
The Desert Dishes of Apollo Valley
Deep in the Mojave desert of central California, scatteredĀ among the scrub-covered hills and rugged, rock-strewn fields, are enormous white radar dishes pointed at the sky — NASA’s “ears” for listening to the faint calls coming from its many spacecraft outĀ exploring our solar system. I recently had the opportunity to pay a visit to the Deep…
Visiting the Place Where We Talk to Space
When you’re talking to spacecraft billions of miles away, you need a powerfulĀ 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 lastĀ week I had the chance to see some of them up close…
Cassini Uncovers Even More Evidence for Enceladus’ Hidden Ocean
It’s been suspected for nearly a decade that Saturn’s 315-mile-wide moon EnceladusĀ harbors a hidden ocean beneath its frozen crust, thanks to observations by the Cassini spacecraft ofĀ icy plumes spraying from its southern pole, and now scientists have even more evidence supporting its existence: Doppler measurements of the moon’s gravity taken during Cassini’s flybys show variations…
The Details Are In The Dunes
And what details! This image, acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 24, 2014, shows rippled dunes in Mars’ southern hemisphere, coated with a fall dusting of seasonal carbon dioxide frost. With the Sun just five degrees above the horizon, the surface detail captured by HiRISE is simply exquisite. Be…
Four Years of SDO
It’s hard to believe it’s already been four years that NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has kept a watchful eye on our home star, but here we are: 2014, and the four-year anniversary of the Feb. 11 launch has come and gone. Amazing. But what’s even more amazing are all the incredible observations and discoveries SDO…
Watch a Full Year of the Moon (in Five Minutes)
This is pretty neat — it’s a visualization of the Moon’s phases and libration all throughout 2014, made by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Visualization Studio. They’ve done these several times in the past, and this is the latest one. For accuracy you just can’t beat it: the global terrain map you see in the…
On the Lunatic Fringe: LADEE’s First Pictures of the Moon
It’s getting so a spacecraft can’t take a decent picture these days without SOMEONE getting in the way! (*Ahem* MOON.) But then it just might be the lunatic we’re looking for… The image above is one of five that were downlinked by NASA’s Lunar Atmospheric Dust Environment Explorer — aka LADEE (that’s “laddie” Ć la…
Voyager’s Long-Distance Valentine
This is from a post I originally published in 2010. I’ll keep trotting it out until it’s not cool anymore. (Which I don’t think will ever happen.) On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of traveling the solar system, the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around to…
Lights in the Dark 