Buzz muses on the next steps for NASA (and his upcoming stint on “Dancing with the Stars”), the Space Coast braces for lay-offs, new proof of lunar ice, Discovery heads (slowly) to the launch pad, Mars’s potentially-hollow moon Phobos gets a close-up, revisiting a comet, windy black holes, blue marbles, icebergs and more on this…
Tag: NASA
Windows? Seven.
NASA’s stunning Image of the Day shows STS-130 mission astronaut Nicholas Patrick finishing up the newly-installed cupola window viewport on the ISS. Since the cupola’s successful installation last week the Space Station crew has been enjoying unprecedented views of Earth through the seven large window panes. Like visiting the Grand Canyon or looking out the…
Carnival of Space #140
Welcome! I’m very honored to host the 140th edition of Carnival of Space here on Lights in the Dark, especially considering that this week marks this site’s one-year anniversary! It’s really been a fascinating year for me. I’ve had a lot of fun finding and featuring images from the various missions exploring our solar system…from…
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…
Moons Near and Far…and More to Come!
246-mile-wide Mimas (foreground) and 70-mile-wide Epimetheus bracket a section of Saturn’s rings in this color-calibrated image from the Cassini spacecraft, taken in October 2009. Happily, we can expect to see beautiful images like this for another  7 years…NASA has extended the Cassini mission until at least 2017! During that time Cassini will transition into its…
Work Well Done
A poignant entry on xkcd.com, a webcomic by Randall Munroe. This is based on the recent news that the rover named Spirit will now officially be a “stationary science platform”. After repeated attempts to dislodge it from its current location, wheels hopelessly embedded in soft sand in a locale called “Troy”, the decision was made…
Prometheus Passing
Prometheus, shepherd moon of Saturn’s F ring, is featured in this dramatic image from Cassini taken as it passed by at a distance of 23,000 miles (37,014 km) on January 27, 2010. This is the closest Cassini has come to Prometheus. The image above has been extensively cleaned up in regard to CCD pixel noise…
Senkyo Very Much
This is a close-up image of Senkyo, a large region on Titan made up of dark dune fields. Regions like this are called “low albedo” , or low reflectivity, areas and they wrap around the moon’s equatorial region. The dunes may be made up of material that falls from Titan’s thick smoglike atmosphere. When weather…
Rising from the Haze
No, it’s not the Enterprise emerging from Titan’s clouds, it’s Tethys, seen in the distance through the larger moon’s outer layer of hydrocarbon haze. Tethys’ giant Odysseus crater is easily visible adorning its north pole and slicing into its terminator. This image was taken on November 26, 2009 by the Cassini spacecraft at a…
Thin Blue Line
The setting sun lights up the the neon blue line of Earth’s atmosphere in this photo taken by the crew of the International Space Station during the STS-129 shuttle mission. Click for the full-size view. The darkness of space above and a dark night on Earth below, this “thin blue line” is all that exists…
Mountains of the Moon
Taken by the LROC camera on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this image shows a detailed look at the mountains within Cabeus Crater – the region where the LCROSS’ Centaur stage rocket impacted to send up a plume of water-rich lunar soil. Many of the shadows seen here are permanent fixtures. The Moon’s orbit…
Images from Enceladus!
The raw images from Cassini’s eighth flyby of Enceladus are in! And they don’t disappoint…the highlight of the set so far, in my opinion, is the image above showing the moon’s signature ice geysers erupting from fracture lines called “tiger stripes” surrounding the south pole. Highlighted by sunlight, the plumes follow the lines of the…
Lights in the Dark 