On November 12, 1966, during the Gemini 12 mission EVA 1 (Extravehicular activity), NASA astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin took his own self-portrait with his camera with our beautiful Earth in the background. This historic photo is widely regarded as the “first space selfie”.
Category Archives: Space Exploration
Mont Saint-Michel, France, From Space
The European Space Agency (ESA) occasionally posts high-resolution photos of space under the title of “week in images”. This amazing image of the Mont Saint-Michel from space, which was captured on 21 June 2017, is also featured on the ESA’s Earth from Space video programme, presented by Kelsea Brennan-Wessels from the ESA Web-TV virtual studios.
Soon, the ISS Will Be the Coldest Known Place in the Universe
Where is the coldest known place in the Universe? It may sound strange, but today, it is here on Earth: in 1995, in a laboratory in M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle and his colleagues have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded, only half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
But, soon, this record will be broken. NASA is going to launch a facility to the International Space Station (ISS) that will contain a spot 10 billion times colder than the outer space. The new Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) facility, which will operate in microgravity, could help answer some big questions in modern physics, allowing researchers to dive deep into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible here on Earth.
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Photographer Catches the Launch of NASA’s Mars InSight Lander
On May 5, 2018, NASA’s robotic Mars lander, InSight, which designed to study the interior of Mars, was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base space launch complex 3-East. This was the first American interplanetary mission to launch from California. Andy Fortson, adventure and lifestyle photographer based in Los Angeles, California has photographed the launch and the result is stunning.
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Earth-i releases its first full-color video of Earth taken from space
Private Space Company Earth-i has released its first full-color video of Earth taken from space. The video was taken by VividX2, the technology prototype for the company’s Vivid-i Constellation.
Virtual Moon Tour in 4K Ultra HD
Using data provided by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft Notes 1 since 2009, NASA has published an amazing virtual Moon tour in 4K Ultra HD Notes 2. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side Notes 3, north and south poles, interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain get highlighted.
Watch: Apollo 16 Liftoff (April 16, 1972)
46 years ago today, on April 16, 1972, the huge, 363-feet (110.6 meters) tall Apollo 16 (Spacecraft 113/Lunar Module 11/Saturn V Notes 1 SA-511) space vehicle was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 12:54 p.m. EST. Crewed by Commander John W. Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke Notes 2, and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly Notes 3, it was the tenth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands.
Want to Become a Citizen Scientist for NASA?
You can help NASA on some projects: for instance, citizen scientists helped NASA identify an aurora-related celestial phenomenon, now called STEVE. Want to become a citizen scientist? You can find projects on the
Astronaut Honors Holocaust Remembrance Day from space with “Moon Landscape” drawing by Holocaust victim Petr Ginz
NASA Astronaut Andrew Jay “Drew” Feustel, who is currently living and working aboard the International Space Station, published a photo on his Twitter account with a replica of the “Moon Landscape” drawing by Holocaust victim Petr Ginz to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). The replica of the painting was first flown in space by Ilan Ramon (June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003), the first Israeli astronaut for NASA. Ramon has died in the re-entry accident of STS-107, the fatal mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Ilan Ramon’s mother and grandmother were Auschwitz survivors, and his grandfather and other family members perished in Nazi death camps.
Feustel took with him to space a copy of a special drawing entitled “Moon Landscape”, which was created by a Jewish Czech boy named Petr Ginz (1 February 1928 – 28 September 1944) while incarcerated in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, during World War II. The drawing depicts how Earth would look from the surface of the moon. Petr was fascinated by science fiction and inspired by his favorite author, the French novelist, poet, and playwright Jules Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905), to draw and write stories about a far-off world he would never visit. At the age of 16, Petr lost his life at Auschwitz.
Continue reading Astronaut Honors Holocaust Remembrance Day from space with “Moon Landscape” drawing by Holocaust victim Petr Ginz
Kliuchevskoi Volcano from Space (NASA Image)
During the STS-68 mission (September 30-October 11, 1994), the crewmembers of Space Shuttle Endeavour used a 70 mm camera to photograph Klyuchevskaya Sopka (also known as Kliuchevskoi), a stratovolcano, the highest mountain on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia and the highest active volcano of Eurasia. The eruption was new when this photo was taken. It was photographed from 115 nautical miles (213 kilometers) above Earth.
