Hasta La Gadget!

Every time I think about the retiring of the Space Shuttle fleet, it bums me out. I’ve been following the Shuttle since grade school when the Challenger disaster was all we could think about. It’s sad to think that for the foreseeable future, United States astronauts will have to catch a ride with foreign governments to be able to make it into space.

With the Space Shuttle fleet now retired, the massive Kennedy Space Center runway where the Shuttles used to land will no longer see astronauts returning home after touching down on its surface. To commemorate the final three active Space Shuttles, black granite plaques have been placed alongside the runway showing where the three Shuttles made their final landings.

There are plaques for the Endeavour, Discovery, and Atlantis – conspicuously absent are plaques for the ill-fated shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

The plaques are placed where the nose gear stopped on each of the shuttle’s final missions and offer details on how many missions each shuttle flew, how many days they spent in space, and how many miles they flew.

[via Florida Today]

For years, the massive runway at Kennedy Space Center was where the space shuttle fleet landed after they completed their missions into space. Black granite plaques are now present on the runway that mark the spots where the shuttles stopped on their last missions. The plaque in the photo below is for the Discovery mission STS-133.

The granite plaques give details about when the final landing was made, how far the special traveled down the runway on its final mission, the number of missions flown, the number of days in space, and the number of miles flown. It’s interesting to see that space shuttle Discovery traveled 148,000,000 miles.

There also plaques embedded in the runway showing the final stopping points of other space shuttles, including the Endeavour, currently on its way to the California Science Institute. In all their three commemorative plaques along the edge of the Shuttle Landing Facility marking where each shuttle’s last landing was.

Endeavour’s plaque marks STS-134 as its final mission with the landing on June 1, 2011 with the shuttle having flown a total of 123,000,000 miles and spent 299 days in space during 25 separate missions. The third plaque is for space shuttle Atlantis STS-135 making its final landing July 21, 2011. Atlantis spent 307 days in space covering 126,000,000 miles during 33 missions flown.

[via Florida Today]

Space shuttle runway pocked with historical markers is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Thursday evening folks – just one day left to go before the weekend is here once again. Today we were finally given some actual details about the Wii U, and it’s safe to say that anticipation is quite a bit higher now that we know it’s release date and pricing. Nintendo started off early with pricing and release information for Japan, and later on in the day, gave us pricing and release date details for the US and European releases. We were also given a list of “launch window” titles for the Wii U, and we have to say – it looks pretty impressive.

We also found out that Bayonetta 2 will be a Wii U exclusive, as strange as that may seem, and Activision gave us some in-depth details about Black Ops II on Wii U. Nintendo gave us a glimpse at its own take on smart TV with Wii TVii, and this new feature has us intrigued, to say the least. We got word today that Apple’s new Lightning adapters aren’t going to work with some accessories, and the iPhone 5 event video was released as well, meaning you can watch the reveal of the new iPhone, along with the various iPod refreshes that were announced yesterday.

Apple has won a pretty big patent battle against Motorola in Germany, and today eBay revealed that it will soon have a new logo, ditching the old one after 17 years. Microsoft told us what it’s doing to fight the spread of the Nitol Botnet earlier today, and we’re hearing that Google threatened to cut Acer out of the Android party at one point in time. Samsung revealed its new Galaxy Victory 4G LTE earlier today, and we were treated to a list of availability by region for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared his hopes for the iPhone 5 and told us what he thinks of the Apple-Samsung verdict, and that is definitely something you don’t want to miss.

Google showed off the first demo that was shot entirely shot with Glass today, and it seems that the trial run of Isis has been delayed to later date and won’t be happening later this month. NVIDIA has introduced two new Kepler GPUs, and Shuttle Computer Handels has introduced its brand new OMNINAS KD20 2-bay NAS. Finally tonight, NASA has talked about plans to have a manned colony on the surface of the moon, which we have to admit has us pretty excited.

That’s all for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up! Enjoy the rest of your Thursday night everyone!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: September 13, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

No human has set foot on the moon for decades now. That might change in the coming year so as the Obama administration has recently talked about details on possibly returning US astronauts to the moon. The most intriguing aspect of the Obama administration’s plan is a prospect of a lunar outpost where explorers could live for months at a time.

This week NASA official Lori Garver gave a speech where she talked about the importance of exploring the moon. Garver also mentioned during her speech that NASA has an unspecified mission back to the moon scheduled tentatively as early as 2017. Garver stated, “We are going back to the moon.”

NASA has recently sent a report to Congress on “sustainable human exploration” of the moon and beyond. Some believe that an outpost of the moon could be used as a jumping off point for exploration even deeper into our solar system. Part of the report outlines what NASA calls a “nearly self-sustaining surface habitat.” This habitat would be capable of extracting oxygen, water, silicon, and other materials on the moon.

Being self-sufficient is key to exploring the solar system and spending an extended amount of time on the moon. The cost of getting basic supplies for survival into space is enormous. Garver also mentioned that President Obama wants to invest nearly $1.4 billion to upgrade and modernize the Kennedy Space Center. The last manned mission to the moon took place in December of 1972.

[via Wall Street Journal]

NASA talks about goals for future manned lunar outpost is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Whew – what a day! For those who missed it, Apple held its big event today, revealing the iPhone 5 and new versions of the of the iPod Touch and the iPod Nano. You can see most of the day’s news in our iPhone 5 event wrap-up and our iPod Touch and Nano wrap-up, but of course, even more news about these new iDevices hit after those event wrap-ups were posted. For instance, we went hands-on with the iPhone 5 and then later with the 5th generation iPod Touch before getting the chance to check out Apple’s new EarPods, which have undergone a redesign just in time for the launch of the iPhone 5. If you’re more of an iPod Nano kind of person, then you’ll be pleased to know that we also have you covered in our hands-on with the 7th generation iPod Nano.

Later on in the day, Apple announced pricing for its new Lightning connector adapters (which can get a little steep in places), and released the iOS 6 Golden Master seed for developers ahead of the operating system’s release on September 19. A full list of iPhone 5 specs made it to the Apple Store this afternoon, and we found out that the iPhone 5 will offer both a GSM and CDMA version. iTunes 10.7 was delivered this afternoon as well, as was a gallery of iLuv’s upcoming iPhone 5 products. Toward the end of the day, Apple released a video featuring Jony Ive and Bob Mansfield giving us an introduction to the iPhone 5, and we ask where the iPhone 5′s rumored NFC functionality went.

As big as Apple’s event was, it wasn’t the only thing worth writing about today. A new report suggests that Windows Phone 8 may not be as far along as we thought, and Foxconn is in the public eye again after an undercover worker published a report on the conditions at the now-famous factory. Google was touting the latest Android numbers today, saying that 500 million Android devices have been activated worldwide.

We actually had quite a few stories about NASA today, with the Mars Orbiter finding signs of dry ice snowfall on the surface of the Red Planet. NASA scientists have viewed a massive impact on the surface of Jupiter, and perhaps most importantly, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s historic moon speech. Famous (or infamous, depending on whether or not you work for the RIAA) music sharer Jammie Thomas has lost her appeal, meaning that the court is still making her pay that whopping $220,000 fine, and finally tonight, Microsoft has been awarded a patent for an interesting new technology that makes us immediately think of Star Trek.

That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up. Be sure to have a look at our Apple portal to catch anything you might have missed from Apple’s presentation, but otherwise, enjoy the rest of your evening!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: September 12, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.