Posts Tagged ‘NASA’
Destination Mars – Zoomable Map showing all missions
You could be forgiven for thinking that the 1975 probes Viking 1 and Viking 2 were the first missions to successful make it to Mars. In truth, the first attempts were made by the Soviet Union as early as 1960. There were 17 attempts prior to the first successful landing. The Russians got there first in 1971 when the Mars 3 lander successfully [...]
NASA unveil Ares 1-X on the launchpad
The Space Shuttle is OLD, well past the sell-by date, and soon to be put out to pasture. I is an amazing piece of machinery that, oddly enough, proved that the re-use model can actually be more expensive that the build and throw away model...Not that I'm knocking it! The Shuttle has pushed the boundaries of space craft design and has facilitated [...]
Organic Molecules Detected in Exoplanet Atmosphere | Universe Today
Organic Molecules Detected in Exoplanet Atmosphere | Universe Today Posted using ShareThis
The Dunes of Mars (thanks to the MRO)
The Mars Orbiter have taken a stunning picture of the Mars surface. It shows patterns on the sand dunes made by local martian winds.
Sailing on the lakes of Titan
Imagine sailing on a lake on the moon of Titan in a nuclear powered sailing craft with Saturn rising high in the sky above you. There is wind and rain, but its a chilly -180 Celsius where Ethane and Methane flow instead of liquid water in world which has been described as an eerie version of Earth. (more...)
Rare picture of Earth as seen from Mars
This is a truely imspiring image of Earth as seen by a Nasa spacecrafts currently orbiting Mars. This photo is a mix of visual and InfraRed images and apparently took quite a bit of effort to produce. Currently Nasa have a mission to take high resolution images of Mars using the HiRISE instrument (High Resolution Imaging Science [...]
Europa’s oceans have Oxygen – enough for life to exist.
Europa is a cool moon. Very cool if you consider that it has an outer core of solid ice a few miles deep. Below the ice there is liquid water. Lots of water... Twice the amount of all of the oceans of earth combined. Until recently, the main issue for "life on Europa" was that despite oxygen being present on the surface, it was not known [...]
No visible 10km Plume from LCROSS impact
According to NASA TV there was no significant visible plume from the impact of the spacecraft. There is good spectographic data and it does show Sodium a cause for some excitement as it wasn't expected. Regarding the spectorgraphic data, they are being cautiously optimistic despite the lack of a visible plume, but they point blank refused [...]
LCROSS Impacts!
Moments ago LCROSS impacted into the moon. I watched it live on NASA live streaming...Will take a while to get any details...will keep you posted
Watch LCROSS hit the moon live on NASA TV
If you are in Ireland (or Europe) you won't be able to pull out a telescope and see the lunar impact live. The event starts about 12:15 lunchtime GMT. BUT you can see it live on NASA TV. So dont miss it ! Oh and make a copy in case they lose this footage too... For details on when its going to happen you can check out the Countdown
Telescopes on Twitter
Twitter is trivial, annoying and pointless. Really? I suppose you have to figure out what it might be good for. For me, the idea that you can have SMS style news feeds from Spacecrafts and Telescopes is pretty amazing.
Life after Hubble?
I recently blogged that the absense of Hubble would leave a huge gap in astrophography which didn't seem likely to be filled anytime soon. NASA however just released this amazing photo of M31 (Andromeda galaxy to most of us) showing over 20,000 UV light sources.The image was taken by the SWIFT spacecraft which was launched in 2004. It is the [...]