Going to space isn’t such a big deal these days. Basically, you just need enough money and you can go. But if you have enough money, you might as well go on your own, or with some mates, right?
For the first time in nearly 50 years, NASA has used a small prototype of a nuclear-reactor engine design to test whether this could one day power deep-space exploration probes.
An ambitious project, dreamed up by a mixed team of scientists and artists, will see a selection of 100 images sent off into orbit as an eternal archive representing humanity and its achievements throughout history.
This is awesome: a nine-gigapixel photo of the Milky Way in all its glory and splendor. Click for the link of the full-size image on which you can zoom in, scroll around and search for the universes secrets.
Photographer Christoph Malin from Austria created this amazing film by stacking image sequences taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It shows beautiful star trails and city lights streaking over the Earth’s surface as seen from space.
That’s not a misprint folks, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams recently ran, swam and cycled in space the same distance as her earthbound counterparts would have done in the Nautica Malibu Triahtlon, which was held in Southern California.
This massive solar whip or filament is 800 000 kilometers long. That’s 20 times the circumference of the earth. Makes you feel small, doesn’t it. The gigantic solar filament collapse has been caught on a NASA observatory camera.
Space, the final frontier, and mankind’s constant fascination. These mesmerising images, from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Competition, capture the night sky in ways that the naked eye never could and will leave you staring at the night sky wishing for an alien abduction.
Unless you’re currently in some kind of deep space training program, or you have some diabolical plan that no one knows about, the chances are pretty slim that you’ll ever actually get to set foot on Mars. Thankfully, we’ve got the next best thing for you, a fully interactive 360° panorama from the surface of the Red Planet. Enjoy.
Curiosity has landed. Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden: “Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars.”
Liu Yang, China’s first-ever female astronaut, had a night shift on Shenzhou 9 a couple of days ago – which is apparently sort of dull in space too, because she entertained herself by going through some Tai Chi exercises. In space. And since the spacecraft returned to earth today, we get to see what that looks like.
NASA will start training a team astronauts to land on an asteroid in the next month, in preparation for a mission that will take humans farther from Earth than ever before. They’ll be collecting mineral samples and determining how to destroy an asteroid in the event that it might collide with the Earth. Seriously.
That’s right, I am officially considering it. I spent some time with Virgin Galactic‘s Commerical Director, Stephen Attenborough (no relation, but an appropriate coincidence, nonetheless) the other day, as we shot the breeze at the Mount Nelson hotel. ETV News captured our conversation, so keep an eye out for the Tech Report on Thursday nights (channel […]
Time-tested wisdom says the sky’s the limit. However, a group of billionaires are looking to change that as they launch the first ever venture to mine asteroids, in space. For real. Click through for the details.
Earlier this week, space shuttle Discovery took its final flight, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to Dulles International Airport, on the back of a 747. That’s a space shuttle piggybacking on a jumbo jet, and it was awesome. Click through for the video.
Yesterday NASA managed to capture the clearest-yet footage of a solar flare in process after magnetic fields on the Sun’s northeastern curve exploded in huge streams of plasma and sun stuff. The footage only accounts for about five seconds of explosion, but it’s very, very cool, both in and out of time-lapse.
Ease back into the remainder of the week with this gorgeous time lapse video shot from the ISS in low orbit over earth. Bask in the beauty of our planet from a point of view that preciously few of us will ever get to experience in real life.
Ever since NASA cancelled their Space Shuttle Program two years ago, the Americans have been searching for an alternative option for space travel to save them from teaming up with their cosmic nemesis Russia. On 16 March, the first viable option presented itself and blew the competition away.
NASA officials have announced that the first launch of a commercially built space capsule to the International Space Station is scheduled for the end of April. California-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) are the dudes responsible for the capsule in question, the unmanned Dragon spacecraft.
In a society of thrill-seekers, bigger (or longer, or higher, or faster) is always better. Many South Africans revel in the fact that the country is home to the highest bungee jump in the world, it also boasts some of the best sky-diving and BASE-jumping opportunities available (just ask Jeb). But, there’s always this one guy who takes things to the next level, like jumping from space…
Bad. Ass. NASA has released a new space atlas, detailing over 560 million stars, galaxies and asteroids, many never seen before. The 18 000 awesome images were taken by NASA’s infrared space telescope, the Wide-field Survey Explorer (WISE). Take a look at some of the incredible space-images after the space-jump.
Hey Doomsdayers, guess what? The world isn’t going to end in 2012, or any time soon for that matter. At least that’s according to a NASA astrophysicist, who I’d assume has a library that smells of rich mahogany and is filled with many leather-bound books, and also a degree in astrophysics.
It’s normally the scientists and engineers that go up into space, but NASA has realised that while people are up there, they need to eat. Whilst a little ahead of itself, a study has opened in Hawaii to find a chef for Mars. Do you have what it takes?
Spaceflight start-up, SpaceX – those guys who want to put a person on Mars in the next decade or two – has been demonstrating the potency of its SuperDraco rockets at their test facility in Texas. Take a look at the fancily-named rockets in action after the jump.
Looks like the iPhone is going to have to update its default lock-screen. A new 64-megapixel, high-definition version of the “Blue Marble” has been taken from the newest Earth observation satellite, Suomi NPP, 824 kilometres above the earth. It’s a stunning photo of the planet, built out of several composite “swaths.”
Start your Tuesday the way your forefathers did, with an amazing time-lapse video of the International Space Station passing over a storm-struck African continent with the Milky Way popping in to say hello in the background. Also visible is Comet Lovejoy, two weeks after its near-fatal sunburn. Please, go look. You’ll feel better about being up.
It’s nice that companies are willing to go to insane lengths to try and make us buy their things. Take G-Form, who wrapped up an Apple tablet in their ‘Extreme Edge’ case, and launched it into space on a weather balloon before dropping it back to earth to prove how extreme their case really is.
NASA has launched an open-source portal to make it easier for agencies to evaluate and improve upon its projects. The initial setup works as a simple directory of open-sourced projects in development, which is hoped to expand into a platform for tracking, hosting and planning the various pieces of software created by the American space agency.
Phobos-Grunt, the 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched into orbit and promptly crippled by failed auxiliary engines, is due to crash back onto Earth soon. Russian space authorities have named January 15th as the likely re-entry date. In case you thought that your fears of high-speed orbital debris ended with 2011.
Space probe Voyager 1 is about to do what no man made object has done in our history. It is about to burst through the outer reaches of our Solar System, almost 11 billion miles from the Sun.