pale blue dot
On Sunday, December 3, there was a Supermoon, the Moon was at its closest point (for 2017) to Earth while it was also a full moon. A series of nighttime photos were taken by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli to create this time-lapse of the Earth as seen from the International Space Station and …
Continue reading “The Rise of 2017 Supermoon from the ISS (Video)”
On Tuesday, November 28, 2017, a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft successfully fired up for the first time since November 1980, after 37 years without use. Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Having operated for more than 40 years as of December 4, 2017, the …
Continue reading “Voyager 1 Fired Up its Thrusters for the first Time in 37 Years”
The Moon follows an elliptic orbit around Earth. Naturally, sometimes it gets closer to the Earth than the other times. When it’s also full moon at its closest point to the Earth, it’s called Supermoon. As a result, the moon appears larger and brighter than usual in the sky. The counterpart of a supermoon is …
Continue reading “What is a Supermoon and when is the next one?”
The US government keeps a massive archive of ancient ice inside the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, Colorado. This ice could hold important information about Earth and its climate throughout its history.
Lockheed Martin, the American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technologies company has teamed up with NASA, to build the next generation spacecraft: the Orion, which is intended to carry a crew of four astronauts to destinations at low Earth orbit (LEO, see notes 1), or beyond, to Moon and even to Mars! Yesterday, the company …
Continue reading “How to Build a Spaceship by Lockheed Martin”
Randy “Komrade” Bresnik (see notes 1), the commander of Expedition 53 (the 53rd expedition to the International Space Station) has published an HD video of their spacewalk (Expedition 53 Spacewalk). Watch the GoPro footage below:
According to the scientists who drilled into the Chicxulub crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, the dinosaur-killer asteroid hit the “worst possible place” (for the dinosaurs, of course). They summarized their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary titled “The Day The Dinosaurs Died”. The documentary was presented by …
Are we alone in the universe? Or are there any other “living planets” other than Earth? How to tell if a planet harbors life? Until 1992, we even don’t know if there are any other planets around the other stars or not. In 1992, two Swiss astrophysicists, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz the first “exoplanet” …
The Soyuz (saw-yooz) is a Russian spacecraft. It was designed by USSR’s Korolev Design Bureau (now RKK Energia) in the 1960s, originally built as part of the Soviet manned lunar programs. The spacecraft remains in service today, and as of November 2017, all expeditions to the International Space Station use Soyuz vehicles (see notes 1). …
Earth, our living planet from space: life makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we’ve discovered so far – there may be extraterrestrial life, or maybe not (see notes 1), but it is the only “living planet” that we know of. Since 1997 (see notes 2), NASA satellites have continuously observed all plant …
