If this entire planet, solar system and galaxy just doesn’t hold enough excitement for you, be prepared to pick up some speed—because scientists have worked out that you need to be travelling at a staggering 1.2 million mph to exit the Milky Way.
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NASA recently announced that it is looking for people to perform what may be the easiest job ever. The space agency is looking for participants for 70 days of study and they will pay you $5000 per month to do nothing but lay in bed. The study is being conducted by NASA’s Flight Analogs Project Team at the Johnson Space Center.
The experiment is designed to study the effects of prolonged exposure to microgravity. These effects can be simulated here on Earth by forcing people to remain horizontal for 70 days. The goal of the Bed Rest Study is to help improve conditions for astronauts who work in a weightless environment.
NASA says that by placing participants in a slightly tilted down position with their heads down and their feet up 24 hours a day for 70 days straight without getting out of bed except for limited times will simulate what happens to the astronauts body during weightlessness in space flight. Participants in the test will have access to video games, TV, books, and Internet. Food will be provided to help participants maintain body weight.
[via MedicalDaily]
A graduate student named Andrew Rushby from the University of East Anglia in Britain recently created two equations able to estimate how long life on Earth can continue to exist. The two equations were designed to estimate the length of time that the Earth is expected to remain within our solar system’s habitable zone. The […]
Orbital Sciences was able to successfully launch its Cygnus cargo ship into orbit last Wednesday. The spacecraft made it from the Earth into space just as it was designed to do. After performing some tests, Cygnus was supposed to approach the ISS and dock with the space station. Cygnus was set to dock with the […]
This glowing purple cloud may look stunning, but you wouldn’t want to get too close—because it’s actually a multi-million degree celsius gas cluster.
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Summer is really over. For real. Today. No. Stop making cutoffs. Actually, if you’re in the southern hemisphere summer is just beginning. You may proceed. The Earth will reach the equinox at 4:44 EST and the Slooh Space Camera is livestreaming now. If you haven’t started talking about nutmeg and using words like "autumnal" you’re way behind. [Space.com]
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Astronaut Don Pettit personifies one of the zucchini plants aboard the International Space Station in his series "Diary of a Space Zucchini." Now New Hampshire Public Radio has given that zucchini and its existential reflections a voice.
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After more than eight years, NASA’s comet-hunting Deep Impact mission has come to an abrupt close. The agency has stopped trying to communicate with the mission probe after losing contact on August 8th. It’s not clear what went wrong, but NASA suspects that it may have lost orientation control, guaranteeing that the Deep Impact vehicle would lose power and freeze. It’s going out on a good note, however. Like NASA’s Mars rovers, Deep Impact easily outlasted its intended lifespan — after successfully intercepting the comet Tempel 1 in 2005, it went on to study three more comets as well as numerous exoplanets. We’ll miss the probe’s continued research, but its legacy should live on through other projects.
Source: NASA
Almost a decade ago, NASA sent a spacecraft called Deep Impact into space, tasking it with providing the agency with information about comets. This was achieved by bashing the space rocks open, sending particles from the comet spinning free to be analyzed by researchers. Now, after about nine years and traversing nearly 5 billion miles, […]
Yesterday, the winners of the fifth annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition were finally announced—and man oh man, are they stunning. Over 1,200 amateurs and pros submitted shots, ranging from stunning aurora borealis images to a panorama taken by a ten-year-old whiz kid.
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