[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CLICK ON IMAGE.] Denizens of planet Earth watched last year’s Perseid meteor shower by looking up into the bright moonlit night sky. But this remarkable view captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan looks down on a Perseid meteor. From Garan’s perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Just as it captured the Phoenix lander parachuting to Mars in 2008, the HiRise camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) snapped this picture of the Curiosity rover’s spectacular descent toward its landing site on August 5 (PDT). The nearly 16 meter (51 foot) wide parachute and its payload […]
The truth is that only the United States has had the knowledge and moxie to successfully land a vehicle on Mars. We have now done it seven times, and no other nation has really come particularly close. And with the touchdown of the one-ton and highly sophisticated Curiosity, the U.S. has reached a whole new […]
PASADENA, Calif. — About 34 hours from the Mars rover Curiosity’s landing (scheduled for 01:31 am Eastern time on Monday), NASA brought us the latest weather forecast from the surface — dry and cold, with a slight chance of dust. Slight is good. Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a dust storm south […]
In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp image was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor. The image shows Schmitt on the left with the lunar rover […]
The United Nations has instructions for what to do when contact is made with extraterrestrials. At least that is what Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka claimed during an interview on Chinese TV. Speaking from the International Space Station, Padalka stated, “The UN and representatives of China have developed detailed instructions in case of the first contact.” […]
THE obituaries and the laments are pouring in from around the world, and properly so, for author Ray Bradbury, dead this week at 91 – Bradbury was a writer for the whole world, not just for any one part of it. … He loved to talk. He loved his fans. He loved the adulation. And […]
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The privately bankrolled Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday, captured by astronauts wielding a giant robot arm. … U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit used the space station’s 58-foot robot arm to snare the gleaming white Dragon after a few hours of extra checks and maneuvers. […]
Right now, the roughly 20,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth are less regulated than the cars on a morning commute. Satellites are usually on a fixed path, so the traffic control comes prelaunch. … The International Telecom Union, a United Nations agency, assigns satellites slots in a geosynchronous orbit 22,000 miles above Earth. Operators must […]
