I am a software developer and a science enthusiast. I was graduated from the Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Computer Engineering. In the past, I worked at the Istanbul Technical University Science Center as a science instructor. I write about the planet Earth and science on this website, ourplnt.com. I am also an animal lover! I take care of stray cats & dogs. This website's all income goes directly to our furry friends. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so I can help more animals!
NASA has published a stunning 360-degree view atop Mont Mercou of the Curiosity Mars rover. The panorama is stitched together from 132 individual images taken on April 15, 2021, the 3,090th Martian day (or sol) of the mission. You can see the amazing panorama by using the arrows in the top left on the video, or by clicking (or touching) and dragging your cursor or mouse, moving the view up/down and right/left.
On May 19, 2021, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket has launched the SBIRS Geo-5 missile warning satellite for the US Space Force. Photographer Andy Lin (@otromundialista) witnessed the event aboard a plane, and published the video of the launch on her Twitter and Youtube accounts saying “My plane happened to be flying by Cape Canaveral during the Atlas V launch yesterday”.
This oldest footage of a solar eclipse was filmed on 28 May 1900, by the famous British magician and inventor Nevil Maskelyne (1863-1924).
The footage has been restored and released online by the BFI channel.
On April 28, 2021, Michael Collins, Apollo 11 pilot and the “loneliest man ever” died aged 90. Collins flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, performed the first crewed landing in history on the lunar surface.
On April 23, 2021, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station (SpaceX Crew-2). The launch was a historic one: for the first time ever people have flown on a reused rocket (Falcon 9 First Stage) and also in a reused capsule (Dragon Spacecraft).
Great news – NASA’s Ingenuity the Mars helicopter performs its first flight. It is the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
Earth has got only one moon – a rocky, cratered place, about a quarter the size of Earth and an average of 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) away. It is simply called – well, “the Moon” because people didn’t know other moons around other planets existed until Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Here are 10 amazing moon facts.
“Houston, we’ve had a problem” (see notes 1 below this post) is the now-famous phrase radioed from Apollo 13 to Mission Control upon the catastrophic explosion that dramatically changed the mission. On the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, NASA recognizes the triumph of the mission control team and the astronauts and looks at the lessons learned. The American space agency commemorates the most “successful failure” in the history of space exploration with the video titled “Apollo 13: Houston, We’ve Had a Problem”.
In April 2021, Ingenuity (the small helicopter stored in NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover) will perform the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. And NASA put a small piece of fabric on the Mars helicopter from the wing of the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft, the “Flyer 1”, which performed the first powered, controlled flight here on Earth on December 17, 1903. The swatch is bound in insulating tape to a wire under Ingenuity’s solar panel.
In fact, contrary to the popular belief, the lengths of day and night aren’t equal on an equinox. There’s another term for this: equilux.