Tag Archives | space

About this Image Dione, one of Saturn’s larger moons, orbits across the face of the planet with Saturn’s unilluminated rings crossing the planet’s middle. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Sizes: Wallpaper download options Standard Wide To source

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket passed its critical design review, gaining a new look in the process.Credit: NASA NASA’s next-generation rocket has a new look. The space agency has revealed a reworked color scheme for the Space Launch System heavy-lift booster, removing the paint from one major component, while adding “racing stripes” to […]

In this silent films from the records of the United States Air Force, parts of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) spacecraft are showcased by men in white coats. According to the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the mission was “to place military personnel in orbit to conduct scientific experiments to determine the ‘military usefulness’ of […]

An illustration depcits NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Pluto-like object in the distant Kuiper Belt.Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has begun chasing down another distant, icy object. New Horizons, which in July performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto , fired up its engines yesterday (Oct. […]

Aquarius, an easily overlooked star pattern with a storied history, will appear to the south during the evening this week. For almost 30 years, I’ve served as a guest lecturer and instructor at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, and if there is one thing that I think has set me apart from my colleagues, it is […]

This photo of the comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was taken on Feb. 12, 2015 by French amateur astronomer Fabrice Noel, 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Paris. (4 minute exposure, 6400 ISO, Sony A7s DSLR).Credit: Fabrice Noel, France The basic building blocks of life may have been present on Earth from the very beginning. Astronomers […]

Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), an evolution of the earlier “Blue Gemini” program, which was conceived to be an all-Air Force parallel of NASA’s Gemini efforts.Credit: U.S. Air Force Several space pioneers shared their experiences this month regarding the Cold War Air Force program: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory. In the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force initiated […]

The object, called WT1190F, was observed using the University of Hawaii 2.2-metre telescope on Oct. 9th, 2015. It is thought to be a spent upper stage rocket body. Current estimates have it re-entering the atmosphere on Nov. 13th, 2015 and if any part survives, it will plummet into the Indian Ocean (~62 miles south of […]

Astronaut David which he wore during his third Apollo 15 moonwalk, sold for a record $1.6 million at RR Auction of Boston on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015.Credit: RR Auction The only privately-owned watch to be worn on the surface of the moon was auctioned for more than $1 million on Thursday night (Oct. 22), setting […]

“The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut” by Clayton C. Anderson.Credit: University of Nebraska Press Clayton C. Anderson is intimately familiar with how to become a NASA astronaut: After all, he applied 15 separate times before he was accepted into the program. Luckily, one of them stuck — and in his new memoir, “The […]