If you’re an astronaut on your way to Mars, there aren’t too many options if your appendix bursts. That’s why a Nebraska-based technology company has developed mini robot space surgeons that can actually climb inside of astronauts’ bodies. The first zero-gravity tests on the machine are about to begin.
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Back when Pluto had some status in our solar system, a handy way to remember the names of the planets was the ‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas’ mnemonic, where the first letter of each word represented each celestial orb. But it’s just confusing now that Pluto’s gone, so maybe a set of planet-themed plates might be a better learning tool.
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This stunning fisheye photograph shows the towering wonder of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope—plus, you know, some galaxy called the Milky Way in the background, too.
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Everybody knows the cowboy reputation associated with early astronauts, the test-pilot swagger immortalized by Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff. But the rockets that took those astronauts to space were built by a group with an equally cinematic image: the nearly-unhinged, completely unfettered mad scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Mika McKinnon brings us a fascinating look at the madcap, explosion-obsessed minds that helped get man into space—and presided over some monumental explosions in the process.
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In its third run, the X-37B, which is a highly secretive and classified spacecraft, has set a new record for the number of days in space. This unmanned craft has … Continue reading
If this image looks oddly familiar, it’s because its a series of crop fields seen from the air—just as a wonderful, colorful radar composite image.
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I don’t know about you, but I can’t have enough of these fly-by videos of the Hubble space telescope. I wish the visualization teams at NASA and ESA made this for each and every single galaxy and nebula out there.
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Yesterday afternoon’s Soyuz launch
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The Royal Observatory of Greenwich, England, has crafted three simple animations to explain three very complex things: What’s inside a black hole, how do we know the age of the sun—did you know the Sun weighs 4,000 trillion trillion hippopotamuses?—and how big is the Universe.
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NASA’s next spacesuit is currently up for public voting—and the weird new designs are unlike anything you’ve seen from NASA before. Drawing on ideas from bioluminescence, contemporary sportswear, and some speculation on the street fashions of tomorrow, whichever suit gets built will change our image of astronauts forever.
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