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 published a video titled “Spotlight Space: How to Build a Spaceship”.
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 professors Alice Roberts and Ben Garrod.
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” (a planet orbiting another star than the Sun).
Then, discoveries continued. Especially after the launch of the Kepler space telescope on March 7, 2009, which is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars, we quickly learned that our Solar System is not a rare phenomenon at all. As of November 2017, scientists have confirmed more than 3,500 exoplanets in more than 2,700 star systems. Now, the question is: are any of these planets (or the planets waiting to be discovered in the future) harbor life? If so, how we can find out?
Currently, we have only one example: the Earth itself. Studying Earth and trying to figure out how we’d conclude the Earth harbors life from a distance (from space) can show us how to find out if a planet harbors life or not. Since 1997, NASA satellites have continuously observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean.
The Soyuz (saw-
The European Space Agency (ESA) published a series of videos titled “Journey to the International Space Station” explaining how astronauts and cosmonauts go to the International Space Station (ISS) and return back to Earth. Here are the amazing three parts videos below.
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 life at the surface of the land and ocean. This view of life from space is furthering knowledge of our home planet, and how it’s changing.
In the Northern Hemisphere, ecosystems wake in the spring, taking in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen as they sprout leaves – and a fleet of Earth-observing satellites track the spread of vegetation. Meanwhile, in the oceans, microscopic plants drift through sunlit surface waters blooming into billions of carbon dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-producing organisms – and satellites map the swirls of their color.
In September 2017, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX has revealed a new plan to colonize Moon and Mars with giant reusable spaceships. They are ambitiously planning to send the first humans to Mars as early as 2024 to build the foundations for the first Martian city. But is Mars really the best place for humans to settle? Some scientists, like Amanda Hendrix (see notes 1), the American planetary scientist, think it’s not, and we should be looking somewhere else and colonize Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, instead.
It may sound strange, but the coldest place in the Universe is not anywhere in the vast, cold outer space – it exists here on Earth. Well, it is not actually a natural place you can come across. It is in a laboratory in M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
An amazing 4K Ultra-HD video of the majestic beauty of Earth as seen by the crew of the International Space Station, accompanied by “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon.
Earth is actually a fragile and isolated rock, a “blue marble” in a vast, cold, and hostile space. But only after seeing our planet from space, we did really understand that. Seeing the Earth first time from a distance was a powerful experience that has changed the way we see our planet. Here are the top 10 most iconic photos of Earth from space.