It may be hard to believe, but it’s already been a full two years since the Space Shuttle Program completed its final mission and put its magnificent fleet of ships into retirement. The last of these to settle into its final resting place was Endeavor, and professional launch photographer Scott Andrews caught it all in this fantastic stop-action video for Time.
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft just detected propylene on Saturn’s moon Titan. You might recognize the name of the chemical as part of polypropylene, the material that the food storage containers in your cupboard are probably made of. It’s the first time that the plastic ingredient has ever been observed anywhere other than Earth.
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Here’s a way to numb the pain of not fulfilling your astronautical dreams and do you one better in the process: Drink this beer actually made from moon dust. You’ll get to gulp down real, honest-to-god, beer-soaked moon bits and become one with the moon in the most literal sense possible.
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Not at all long ago, in our galaxy just two planets away, NASA’s Messenger probe discovered what appears to be a raised human shape in the surface of Mercury—and it bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars‘ Han Solo.
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It’s nearly impossible for us to imagine how the Earth might look to someone who’s only ever seen it from a local’s vantage point. But thanks to the Library of Congress, we don’t have to imagine—newly posted images of 19th century drawings show us exactly what humans thought the Earth looked like far before we could ever have known for sure. The Smithsonian compiled a few of them, and some of our favorites lie below. You can see the rest over at The Library of Congress here. [Library of Congress via The Smithsonian]
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The speed of light in a vacuum stands at “exactly 299,792,458 metres per second“. The reason today we can put an exact figure on it is because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant that has been measured with lasers; and when an experiment involves lasers, it’s hard to argue with the results. As to why it comes out somewhat conspicuously as a whole number, this is no coincidence- the length of metre is defined using this constant: “the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.”
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As you may know, yesterday was Curiosity’s one-year anniversary
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Can you believe it’s been a full year since the Mars Curiosity rover made its absolutely spectacular red, dusty landing
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That’s right. For the second day in a row, Warner Bros. has released another trailer for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Someone must be drunk at the wheel. But this one is especially scary and nearly made me pee my pants.
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Jeff Bezos’ child-like love and wonder of space and rockets has yielded many a great thing, including Apollo 11’s #5 engine. The Amazon CEO confirmed today that the rockets dredged from the Atlantic earlier this year
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