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Posted by Ben Huber on Feb 16, 2015 in Science 
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory celebrated its five-year anniversary on February 11th, and to celebrate they put together a video showing what they’ve been seeing as they watched the sun these past five years. There’s a highlight video too! Basically, if you ever wanted to stare into the sun for a while and not damage your eyes, these are the videos for you. “Capturing an image almost once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt,” says NASA. Praise the sun! Read more…
Tags: NASA, Space, Sun
Posted by Ben Huber on Feb 2, 2015 in Science 
Do you like cool space rockets? I sure do. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been doing some amazing work with vertical takeoff and landing rockets (if you haven’t seen if before, watch it here — it’s awesome). Their next rocket, the Falcon Heavy, plans to launch later this year, and will land all three rockets back on the ground vertically. SpaceX has put together a CGI video showing off the entire plan, and well… I’m excited. This kind of engineering work always blows me away. I just hope everything works as intended! You might remember that recently their Falcon rocket test flight went awry after it ran out of hydraulic fluid earlier than expected. SpaceX has since remedied that issue, and I can’t wait to see the next test flight! Read more…
Tags: Elon Musk, Space, SpaceX
Posted by Ben Huber on Dec 1, 2014 in Science 
In the future, we hope to colonize other planets, right? Going to Mars is the next goal, but even that seems so far away. But our imagination can be quite effective at inspiring us and getting there quicker, which is why I have loved the recent boom in space-themed movies, such as Gravity, Interstellar, and others. This short film by Erik Wernquist is an amazing look at how humanity might expand and live in the rest of our solar system. Perhaps most exciting: none of these places are made-up — they’re all real places that we could potentially go someday. Check out the video below. Make sure to open it in full-screen! Read more…
Tags: Short Films, Space, Space Exploration
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 13, 2014 in Science, Tech 
While probes have played around comets before, none have ever landed on a comet — until now. The European Space Agency is finally seeing the payoff for a mission they started way back in March 2004, when they launched the unmanned Rosetta spacecraft and its lander Philae. While the Rosetta met up with the comet back in July, it took weeks to fly around the comet and determine a safe place to land. Operations were complicated by the Rosetta having to travel over 6 billion kilometers to meet up with the comet’s path; at that distance, even light-speed transmissions take almost half an hour to reach Earth, so any control had to be calculated and input well ahead of landing. Despite some bumps (including the securing harpoons not firing, resulting in a bounce and a second landing), it seems Philae is running smoothly now and will be collecting data through about March 2015, when it builds up too much heat. The Rosetta will at least operate through December 2015, but could go longer if the fuel holds out. Congratulations, ESA! Now get some cool data! Read more…
Tags: Space, Space Exploration, spaceships
Posted by Bob Muir on Feb 6, 2014 in Science, Tech 
China put a rover on the moon called Jade Rabbit, which is all well and good — but it’s already having technical difficulties dealing with the moon’s atmosphere. That’s kind of a big problem if you want your rover to work on the moon. As night falls on the moon, China is trying to fix Jade Rabbit, but there’s a good chance that it won’t recover. The rover has been “writing” about its experiences in the Chinese media, and his latest entry is a sort of goodbye letter. How better to present this semisweet moment than dressing up Star Trek‘s Patrick Stewart as the rover and having him read the final lines? That’s what The Daily Show did. The whole segment provides good coverage of the incident, but you can skip to 4:50 if you just want to see Stewart in gold foil and styrofoam like some old Doctor Who monster. Read more…
Tags: Captain Picard, China, Moon, Space
Posted by Bob Muir on Nov 20, 2013 in Cinema 
What do you do when your franchise needs new ideas? Send it into space! They did it with Jason X, they did it with Super Mario Galaxy, and director Robert Rodriguez is teasing it with this fake trailer that aired before Machete Kills in October. If you didn’t go see it in theaters, you can see it here. Machete Kills Again…In Space is partially riffing on Star Wars, but I’ll let you see that for yourself. Now the only question is whether or not someone will put forth the money to make this sequel…or if it will be reasonably tied to any prior continuity, what with it, you know, being in space and all. Read more…
Tags: Sci-Fi, Space
Posted by Ben Huber on Jul 7, 2013 in Science 
I’ve been fascinated by space travel since I was very young – especially the idea of space ships. It also makes me a bit depressed about the poor funding for NASA and general lack of public interest in space as a whole. Still, many out there share my enthusiasm and dwarf it with their efforts. Private companies like SpaceX have been doing amazing work to expand the industry and make space travel a viable thing. I was blown away by the video they uploaded recently featuring their Grasshopper rocket take off, then land… vertically. This is something that was previously declared “too difficult” or “too costly” but here it is. Check out the amazing video below. Read more…
Tags: Space, SpaceX
Posted by Bob Muir on May 14, 2013 in Science 
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been delighting the internet with his videos from space since he took over command of the International Space Station last December. Now, his time has come to an end and he is handing over control to Expedition 36, but not before recording and uploading one last video: a rather well-done cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Read more…
Tags: David Bowie, International Space Station, Space
Posted by Ben Huber on Dec 4, 2012 in Science 
Doing some studies back in the 1970s, NASA’s Ames Research Center had several artists make renderings of what possible space colonies could look like. Many of these artworks are what inspired many more artists and solidified that “look” that we identify with conceptual 70s space art. Pop culture was an obvious influence on them as well, I’m sure. I love this era of art and imagination that people had for the future of space travel and living – it really does have a nostalgic feel to it. Click below for more images, or see NASA’s full gallery here, now scanned in hi-res. Read more…
Tags: NASA, Space
Posted by Ben Huber on Oct 29, 2012 in Science 
Here’s a great way to start your week if you’re a space fan: a 9-gigapixel (yes, giga) image of the Milky Way taken by the VISTA at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Thousands of images that were taken by the telescope were stitched together and then released in one enormous 108,500 x 85,500 pixel picture – and it looks absolutely gorgeous. It was run through three infrared filters so we can see stars that would usually be hidden in a normal view. If you’d like you can visit the site and see higher-res versions of the image, or even download the original full-size picture! Yes, all 24 gigs of it!
Tags: milky way, Space
Posted by Ben Huber on Oct 15, 2012 in Videogames 
Kickstarters are pretty much overdone now, right? What about a Kickstarter that doesn’t use Kickstarter? Chris Roberts, creator of Wing Commander, wants to create a new space sim called Star Citizen. So far he’s built an impressive tech demo to show where he wants the game to go: a seamless, realistic experience. Essentially, you can walk around a huge ship, hop in your smaller fighter, take off into space, and fly everywhere – with no loading screens. A high goal to hit, but the footage of the game so far looks fantastic. The best thing he mentions is being able to have multiple people pilot a ship, with you steering the craft, a buddy in the back manning the guns, and more. If this lives up to the promises made, this could be every sci-fi fanboy’s dream. Watch the video after the jump! Read more…
Tags: Space
Posted by Michael Sacco on Oct 8, 2010 in Science 
These awesome photos from the Moscow Aviation Institute depict the aborted Soviet moon lander project. The US ended up winning the space race in the 60s, just as Kennedy promised, but the Soviets weren’t too far behind, as these devices show. Also in this gallery are photos of the Soyuz landing capsule, the docking station for the Internation Space Station, and more marvels of the Soviet space program. Even amidst the metal plating and plexiglass you can see the fragility of it all, the myriad of things that could go wrong in space. It’s a wonder that we ever got to space at all, much less in machines like this, but we did it. Read more…
Tags: Soviet space program, Space
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