The 2014 Winter Olympics officially began with an extravagant opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia, today (Feb. 7), and even NASA has embraced the spirit of the games with striking new satellite views of Olympic sites from orbit. The newly released photos of Sochi Winter Olympics venues from space were captured by a NASA instrument on the Earth-watching […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has captured its first view of Earth from the surface of the Red Planet — a striking image that shows our home planet as a bright light in the Martian sky, with the moon shining nearby. The rover apparently watched the Martian sunset, then photographed Earth in the night sky […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA] What if a rock that looked like a jelly donut suddenly appeared on Mars? That’s just what happened in front of the robotic Opportunity rover currently exploring the red planet. The unexpectedly placed rock, pictured above, was imaged recently by Opportunity after […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, JPL – Processed Image Copyright: Ted Stryk] Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune … discovered in 1989, in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system’s most distant gas giant planet. But looking through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, […]
Signs of life beyond Earth could be found within a decade under the most optimistic scenarios but the U.S. will need to keep up spending to maintain pace in a 21st century space race, astrobiologists told Congress on Wednesday. Sara Seager, a physics and planetary science professor at MIT and recipient of a 2013 MacArthur […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA/JPL/SSI; Composition: Gordan Ugarkovic] This image of Saturn could not have been taken from Earth. No Earth based picture could possibly view the night side of Saturn and the corresponding shadow cast across Saturn’s rings. Since Earth is much closer to the Sun than Saturn, only the day […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] It has picked up almost universally positive reviews and is being tipped for Oscars glory next year. Now Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity has begun to pick up praise from a surprising source – Christian critics who say the 3D space spectacular celebrates the presence of God in the universe. Paul […]
Ben Rich was the director of Lockheed’s Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991. Skunk Works is a division of Lockheed Martin that develops super high-tech aircraft, and is responsible for developing the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber, and the F-22 Raptor. In a recent interview with Open Minds, Jan Harzan, the […]
Here is what might happen if we suddenly encountered a day without satellites… 08:00 There was nothing sudden. Planes did not fall out of the sky, the lights didn’t go out or the water supplies fail. At least, not at first. … But outside, the loss of global satellite communications was putting the world in […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLTUION] / Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA It was one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen in late 2010, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around […]