Curiosity Self-Portrait Panorama
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS - Panorama by Andrew BodrovExplanation: This remarkable self-portrait of NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover includes a sweeping panoramic view of its current location in the Yellowknife Bay region of the Red Planet’s Gale Crater. The rover’s flat, rocky perch, known as “John Klein”, served as the site for Curiosity’s first rock drilling activity. At the foot of the proud looking rover, a shallow drill test hole and a sample collection hole are 1.6 centimeters in diameter. The impressive mosaic was constructed using frames from the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Mastcam. Used to take in the panoramic landscape frames, the Mastcam is standing high above the rover’s deck. But MAHLI, intended for close-up work, is mounted at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. The MAHLI frames used to create Curiosity’s self-portrait exclude sections that show the arm itself and so MAHLI and the robotic arm are not seen. Check out this spectacular interactive version of Curiosity’s self-portrait panorama.
(via ifuckinglovespace)
Tragedy in Russia: Hundreds have been reported injured after a meteorite crashed near the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains Friday. Said Nadezhda Golovko, deputy head of Chelyabinsk Secondary School No. 130:
When I saw some white narrow cloud moving outside the window I ran up to it and saw a huge blinding flash. It was like the way I would imagine a nuclear bomb. At first, there was no sound at all as if I suddenly went deaf
Russian authorities have rushed to the scene in mass, assessing damage and making sure there’s no increase in radiation levels as a result of the impact.
Read more about the impact over at World Now.
(Photos via Nasha Gazeta / www.ng.kz / Associated Press, Oleg Kargopolov / AFP/Getty Images, Chelyabinsk.ru / Associated Press)
“Everything is looking good.”
First View of Earth from Moon
Date: 23 Aug 1966NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 sent back the world’s first view of Earth from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was later reprised in color by the Apollo astronauts.
Credit: NASA
This is a new project I’ve started.
Earth as Art will feature a new image of the Earth from space every day. The title is shared with a series of photos taken by Landsats 5 and 7 and distributed by the USGS.
This blog, however, will use photos from every available source, whether from satellites, probes, rockets or astronauts, to showcase our planet’s beauty from that unique perspective.
(via earth-as-art)
Bigelow Expandable Activity Module Installation Animation
An animation of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module’s extraction and installation on the International Space Station.
NASA and Bigelow Aerospace announced today plans to deploy expandable modules to the ISS. Here are NASA’s release and the Orlando Sentinel’s story on the news.
The BEAM is scheduled to be launched in 2015 aboard SpaceX’s Dragon.
(via ifuckinglovespace)
— Astrophysicist Mario Lavio on the recently announced “super-Earth” exoplanet KOI-172.02.
Title:
Astronaut Ronald Evans photographed during transearth coast EVADescription:
Astronaut Ronald E. Evans is photographed performing extravehicular activity (EVA) during the Apollo 17 spacecraft’s transearth coast. During his EVA Command Module pilot Evans retrieved film cassettes from the Lunar Sounder, Mapping Camera, and Panoramic Camera. The total time for the transearth EVA was one hour seven minutes 19 seconds, starting at ground elapsed time of 257:25 (2:28 p.m.) and ending at ground elapsed time of 258:42 (3:35 p.m.) on Sunday, December 17, 1972.
The Last Moon Shot
Credit: Apollo Program, NASA (image scanned by J.L. Pickering)Explanation: In 1865 Jules Verne predicted the invention of a space capsule that could carry people. His science fiction story “From the Earth to the Moon” outlined his vision of a cannon in Florida so powerful that it could shoot a Projectile-Vehicle carrying three adventurers to the Moon. Over 100 years later NASA, guided by Wernher Von Braun’s vision, produced the Saturn V rocket. From a spaceport in Florida, this rocket turned Verne’s fiction into fact, launching 9 Apollo Lunar missions and allowing 12 astronauts to walk on the Moon. As spotlights play on the rocket and launch pad at dusk, the last moon shot, Apollo 17, is pictured here awaiting its December 1972 night launch.
(via ifuckinglovespace)
— Commander David Scott, Apollo 15 (via ifuckinglovespace)
(Source: hq.nasa.gov, via ifuckinglovespace)
— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut (via ifuckinglovespace)
On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.
The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.
‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.
(via ifuckinglovespace)
npr:
Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now
Scientists working on NASA’s six-wheeled rover on Mars have a problem. But it’s a good problem.
They have some exciting new results from one of the rover’s instruments. On the one hand, they’d like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.
[…]
The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. “We’re getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,” John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That’s where data from SAM first arrive on Earth. “The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down,” says Grotzinger.
SAM is a kind of miniature chemistry lab. Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM, and it will tell you what the sample is made of.
Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking. “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” he says.
[…]
So why doesn’t Grotzinger want to share his exciting news? The main reason is caution. Grotzinger and his team were almost stung once before. When SAM analyzed an air sample, it looked like there was methane in it, and at least here on Earth, some methane comes from living organisms.
But Grotzinger says they held up announcing the finding because they wanted to be sure they were measuring Martian air, and not air brought along from the rover’s launchpad at Cape Canaveral.
“We knew from the very beginning that we had this risk of having brought air from Florida. And we needed to diminish it and then make the measurement again,” he says. And when they made the measurement again, the signs of methane disappeared.
Grotzinger says it will take several weeks before he and his team are ready to talk about their latest finding. In the meantime he’ll fend off requests from pesky reporters, and probably from NASA brass as well. Like any big institution, NASA would love to trumpet a major finding, especially at a time when budget decisions are being made. Nothing succeeds like success, as the saying goes.
[…]
For now, though, we’ll have to wait to see what’s got Mars rover scientists itching to say what they found.
(via ifuckinglovespace)
Today is Carl Sagan’s birthday. He would have been 78 years old.
Carl is best known for his Cosmos series, a PBS production, that explored and explained the wide-range of science. The thirteen-part series spanned the history of universe, and brought the wonders of science into people’s homes. His infectious energy and excitement for all things science was easily recognizable and Carl quickly became the much-beloved face of science for many.
In addition to his desire to bring the sciences to the masses, Carl sought to bring humanity into the cosmos. A long-time believer in exterrestrial life, Carl worked for many years at SETI. He advocated for and helped design the Pioneer plaques and the Voyager Golden Record, with the hope that maybe, one day, they would be encountered by intelligent life forms other than our own.
In time, Carl became more politically active. A peaceful person, he opposed the expansion of nuclear arms, believing that nuclear energy would be best utilized for exploratory purposes rather than destructive.
Upon his death in 1996, president of the National Academy of Sciences Bruce Alberts said of Carl:
Even 16 years after his death, Carl remains a popular and captivating figure. Recently, a YouTube series was produced in Carl’s name, pairing some of his most popular speeches and quotes with awe-inspiring images of the Earth and cosmos.
Above is the first episode of Cosmos. Enjoy.
