On December 16, 1992, eight days after its final encounter with Earth, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of Earth and the moon.
Category Archives: Space Exploration
The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon
An amazing NASA photo: the crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this spectacular photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit during the final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program.
Earth’s oldest rock has been found… on the Moon!
According to research published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Earth’s oldest rock (which is 4.1 billion years old) has been found in an Apollo 14 sample from the Moon. If confirmed, it’s an amazing discovery.
Earth: The Pale Blue Dot by Michael Marantz (Video)
A very inspirational video created by Michael Marantz, titled “Earth: The Pale Blue Dot”, contains readings from Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot“.
5 space probes leaving the solar system (for now)
As of 2019, only five space probes are leaving the solar system: Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons. The Voyagers already left the solar system and entered interstellar space (Voyager 1 on August 25, 2012, and Voyager 2 on November 5, 2018. The others also will leave the heliosphere (see …
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Speed of Light [perfect visual explanations]
The speed of light is the Universal speed limit – nothing can travel faster than light. In the vacuum (commonly denoted c), its exact value is 299,792,458 meters per second (around 186,000 miles per second). In other words, if you could travel at the speed of light, you could go around the Earth 7.5 times …
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Panorama of the far side of the Moon by the Chinese Lunar Lander
On January 10, 2019, the China National Space Agency unveiled the panoramic image of the far side of the Moon taken by the Chang’e 4 Lunar Lander.
Moon Plants: Another historic first by China’s Lunar Lander
Scientists from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) have confirmed that the seedlings taken to the far side of the moon with Chang’e 4 lunar lander have started sprouting. Or to put it another way: this is the first time something has grown on an astronomical body outside of the Earth! Now we have “moon …
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Margaret Hamilton, the first software engineer [her code got humans on the moon!]
Margaret Hamilton is not only one of the first software developers, but she also literally created the term “Software Engineering” to describe her work. The code she wrote successfully put humans on the moon for the first time.
First Flower Grown in Space
A beautiful photo showing the first flower grown in space (a zinnia flower) with our beautiful Earth in the background. Now retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared photographs of a blooming zinnia flower in the Veggie plant growth system aboard the International Space Station on his Twitter account back in 2016.
