NASA may have its sights set on Mars, but before it can send astronauts to the Red Planet it needs to hone its skills with long-distance, long-duration human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit. Enter the “missing link” in exploration evolution: the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, NASA’s plan for developing the technology and experience for Mars while learning…
Tag: space exploration
These 100 People Are One Step Closer to Living – and Dying – on Mars
You may be looking at the faces of future Martians. (*Although that’s looking more and more unlikely – see below.) The video above, released Feb. 15, shows the results of the latest round of selections for the MarsOne mission: to establish living conditions on Mars and, eventually, send 24 individuals who will become the first permanent human residents on…
A Snowman on Vesta
Aptly nicknamed the “Snowman”, these three craters were imaged on August 6, 2011 by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in orbit around the protoplanet Vesta. Located on Vesta’s northern hemisphere, the craters were first visible to researchers on July 23. Dawn has been in orbit around Vesta for one month now and has already returned many amazingly detailed…
MESSENGER’s Day in the Sun
After 7 years and almost 5 billion of miles of traveling around the blistering inner solar system NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is finally ready for the moment it was created for: orbital insertion around Mercury, the innermost planet! At 9pm EDT tomorrow MESSENGER will attempt to establish orbit and if successful will become the first spacecraft…
Color Me Saturn
A somewhat truish colorized image of Saturn’s southern hemisphere, taken by Cassini on June 26, 2010 from a distance of 1,354,284 miles (that’s over five times the distance from Earth to the moon!) I substituted Cassini’s infrared and ultraviolet raw image channels for red and blue, respectively, and adjusted the combined results (with a native…
Meanwhile, back on Mars…
Opportunity has recently moved away from its latest distraction: a pair of ancient craters in the dust dunes of the Meridiani Plains dubbed “San Antonio”. The rover didn’t stay long though…a couple of days, just enough to take a few photos of the soft-edged, sandy craters. It has since struck out south again over 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…
Lights in the Dark 