The Beautiful Surface Of Europa

A photo of Saturn. Took by Cassini with COISS on May 22, 2008 at 13:31:01. Detail page on OPUS database.

Northern lights (by Teemu Lautamies)

M22 globular cluster

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Today marks the 40th anniversary for the launch of the Viking 1 lander/orbiter to Mars in 1975, which set the stage - err, launch pads - for subsequent flyby, orbiter, lander, and rover missions. 

Although some of these missions are marked as “failed” attempts, an engineer or flight controller would dismiss this classification, as data from every mission parleyed information for the next. Failures? No. More like “growing pains” in our spacefaring adolescence. 

The year 2015 marks another noteworthy anniversary to which the Viking program laid the foundation for our curiosity and present trajectory for NASA’s #JourneyToMars. 

This wonderfully produced video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conveys the breadth of vision and the excitement from, among every aspect of each robotic mission, successfully received data! 

Enjoy, and continue the journey with us as we work to preserve the legacy of the Viking program with The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project, the #FirstOnMars! 

Illustration by Jean Luc Beghin for the 1970 edition of Spirou.

The top-right text says the image doesn’t depict any particular moment during the Apollo missions but that the two astronauts were picked arbitrarily: Frank Borman, commander of Apollo VIII (the first mission to fly around the moon) and Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo XI (and the first person to walk on the moon).

I cleaned this image up a bit and the source-file can be found here, as well as other high definition scientific illustrations.

Aurora from the ISS.

Photo credit: NASA

Normal Things…Done in a Not So Normal Way

Floating around in zero gravity may sound like a blast, but it can actually present a lot of challenges to things we do everyday here on Earth with little to no thought. Here are a few ways that astronauts on the International Space Station complete normal tasks in orbit:

1) Washing Hair

You can’t just have a shower on the space station because the water would come out of the faucet and float all over the place. In this video, NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg demonstrates how she uses a bag of water, no rinse shampoo, a towel and her comb to wash her hair.

2) Drinking Coffee

Believe it or not, there are special cups used on the space station to drink coffee from the new ISSpresso machine. I mean, you wouldn’t want hot coffee floating around in the air…would you? Previously, astronauts drank coffee from plastic bags, but let’s face it, that sounds pretty unenjoyable. Now, there are zero Gravity coffee cups, and an Italian espresso machine aboard the International Space Station! These cups were created with the help of capillary flow experiments conducted in space.

3) Sleeping

There’s nothing like crawling into bed after a long day, but astronauts can’t exactly do that while they’re in microgravity. Instead of beds, crew members use sleeping bags attached to the walls of their small crew cabins. They are able to zipper themselves in so that they don’t float around while they’re asleep. This may sound uncomfortable, but some astronauts, like Scott Kelly, say that they sleep better in space than they do on Earth!

4) Exercising 

Exercising in general is an important part of a daily routine. In space, it even helps prevent the effects of bone and muscle loss associated with microgravity. Typically, astronauts exercise two hours per day, but the equipment they use is different than here on Earth. For example, if an astronaut wants to run on the treadmill, they have to wear a harness and bungee cords so that they don’t float away.

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Astronomy is important because it tells us how big is the universe and how it spreads even more and when we understand that infinite distances we will learn to love and appreciate what is closest to us

My astronomy teacher, Slobodan Spremo (via amsterdam-obsessed)

Aboard the International Space Station this morning, Astronaut Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully captured JAXA’s Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) at 6:28 a.m. EDT.

Yui commanded the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to reach out and grapple the HTV-5, while NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren provided assistance and Scott Kelly monitored HTV-5 systems. The HTV-5 launched aboard an H-IIB rocket at 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. Since then, the spacecraft has performed a series of engine burns to fine-tune its course for arrival at the station.

The HTV-5 is delivering more than 8,000 pounds of equipment, supplies and experiments in a pressurized cargo compartment. The unpressurized compartment will deliver the 1,400-pound CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) investigation, an astrophysics mission that will search for signatures of dark matter and provide the highest energy direct measurements of the cosmic ray electron spectrum.

Below is a breathtaking image shared by Astronaut Scott Kelly of the HTV-5 and Canadarm2, which reached out and grappled the cargo spacecraft.