On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit making astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell the first humans in history to travel around the Moon and see first-hand its hidden far side. During their 10-orbit voyage they captured one of the most well-known and iconic images of the Space Age: the blue-and-white…
Tag: space
John Lennon Memorialized with a Crater on Mercury
33 years after his death, John Lennon’s name has been officially given to a crater on Mercury. Imagine that. The 95 km (59 mile) wide Lennon crater is one of ten newly named craters on the planet, joining 114 other craters named since NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby in January 2008.
A Portrait of Earth and the Moon from 4 Million Miles Away
21 years ago today, December 16th, 1992, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft took this image of Earth and the Moon from a distance of about 3.9 million miles (6.2 million km). It’s one of the few images ever captured that singularly show both worlds in their entirety. And to think that when this image was taken, our…
There’s a Jade Rabbit on the Moon!
There’s a rabbit on the Moon! A robot rabbit, that is — China’s Yutu rover (named after the mythological jade rabbit pet of the lunar goddess Chang’e) successfully deployed from the Chang’e-3 lander earlier this afternoon, completing the country’s first successful lunar landing and the first soft touchdown on the Moon by any nation since…
Fly Over Titan’s “Land O’Lakes”
By now you probably know about the lakes of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan. Thanks to Cassini, we know that Saturn’s largest moon is the one other place in the solar system where liquid can be found in stable amounts on the surface, except that it’s not water like we have here on Earth, but rather…
“Take Us Home, Scotty…” Juno Takes the First Video of Earth and Moon From Space
If this doesn’t tug at your heart’s space strings, I don’t know what will. What we’re seeing here is a video made from images captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it flew past Earth on October 9, 2013. This is the first second time* a video has been made of the Moon orbiting our planet from…
Cassini’s Best Look Yet At Saturn’s Crazy Hexagon
Yes, I said hexagon. If you haven’t heard, our solar system’s second-largest planet has another curious feature besides its sprawling rings; it’s also in possession of an uncannily geometric six-sided jet stream encircling its north pole — at the heart of which lies a churning hurricane-like vortex over 1,800 miles wide. This hexagon has been…
Questions About ISON? Here Are Some Answers:
Unless you’ve been living in the Oort Cloud you’ve probably heard about the current travels of comet C/2012 S1 (aka ISON) through the inner solar system. Although this soon-to-be “sungrazing” comet was first spotted by astronomers Vitali Nevski (from Belarus) and Artyom Novichonok (Russia) on Sept. 21, 2012, it’s actually been on its way toward the…
The Other Side of ISON: Here’s the Comet as Seen from Mercury
While many skywatchers, scientists, and astronomy enthusiasts around the world wait to see if comet ISON survives its perihelion — that is, its closest pass by the Sun — on Nov. 28, the MESSENGER spacecraft has captured an image of the incoming comet from its position in orbit around Mercury! The image above, shared today…
Watch this beautiful new trailer for “In Saturn’s Rings”
It’s a labor of love: using hundreds of thousands of real images taken by NASA’s Cassini, Galileo, Voyager, and other space exploration missions to create a stunning feature-length, high-definition IMAX movie that showcases the beauty of our Solar System on the big screen like never before. This is the achievement of “In Saturn’s Rings,” a…
Happy Birthday, ISS!
It’s been 15 years since the first piece of what we now know as the International Space Station left the surface of our planet. It was Russia’s Zarya module, launched aboard a Proton rocket on Nov. 20, 1998, and the U.S. followed suit two weeks later with the Unity module sent aboard the shuttle Endeavour….
The 2014 Year in Space Calendars are Here!
And you will want one! (Trust me on this.) Produced by Starry Messenger Press in conjunction with The Planetary Society, the 2014 Year in Space calendar is (like its 2013 version) a gorgeous 16″ x 22″ (40.5 cm x 56 cm) work of art filled with over 120 images of space exploration and hundreds upon…
Lights in the Dark 