The Full Resolution Video of Curiosity Touching Down on Mars

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via gizmodo.com

One of the biggest bummers about Mars Rover Curiosity’s epic landing is that there was no news crew on the surface to catch footage of the descent. This full resolution video of Curiosity touching down from its own point of view is the next best thing.

This isn’t the first video of touchdown, but it’s the best. It’s the result of stringing together all the high resolution shots the rover took on its way to the surface, high resolution shots that took a lot longer to get back to Earth than the initial thumbnails. If it seems a bit choppy, that’s because Curiosity only took about four pictures per second. It might not be movie quality, but this is the best video out there of what it’s like to land on Mars. Incredible.

43 Years Ago Today, We Walked On The Moon

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via techcrunch.com

As lovers of technology and slaves to the news cycle, we all get caught up in the next new thing. The cynic in me notes that the 43rd anniversary of the moon landing – an occurrence that changed the course of history with a completeness and intensity that few warmongers have ever been able to induce – is just another moon landing anniversary. It isn’t the 25th or the 50th or the 100th. It’s just something that happened 43 years ago today at about 8pm UTC. In short, two men – born helpless as the rest of us – through time, training, and sheer will, were thrust into space by the greatest minds of our generation and then stepped onto a lunar soil that the New York Times reported as being fine and powdery.

NASA Envisions Alien Worlds Photos

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via in.news.yahoo.com

For decades, NASA has delighted stargazers with pictures taken by astronauts, telescopes, and rovers across the galaxy — photographic glimpses of real planets, moons, stars, and other heavenly bodies. When illustrators, meanwhile, stretch their imaginations — giving shape and color to what, say, a sunrise on another world — their work offers brilliant notions of what vistas beyond our tiny corner of space might look like. Captured by a camera or, as in this gallery, envisioned by artists, the far reaches of space continue to humble and amaze.

Our Sun Like You Have Never Seen It Before

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via gizmodo.com

This video takes SDO images and applies additional processing to enhance the structures visible. While there is no scientific value to this processing, it does result in a beautiful, new way of looking at the sun. The original frames are in the 171 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet. This wavelength shows plasma in the solar atmosphere, called the corona, that is around 600,000 Kelvin. The loops represent plasma held in place by magnetic fields. They are concentrated in “active regions” where the magnetic fields are the strongest. These active regions usually appear in visible light as sunspots. The events in this video represent 24 hours of activity on September 25, 2011.

NASA Astronauts Are Training for Missions to Asteroids

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via gizmodo.com

The Moon? Boring. Mars? Meh. The next giant leap for mankind won’t come in the form of an interplanetary trip, but rather a quest to the pile of rocks which weren’t quite good enough to become planets. Yup, asteroids. And NASA’s already started training for the trip.

The idea behind visiting an asteroid is that astronauts can explore the surface for minerals, and to gather knowledge about the oversized rocks should they ever end up en route to planet earth and need to be destroyed.

NASA Captures the Sun’s Most Striking Photo Yet

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via gizmodo.com

You are looking at the Sun’s Evil Eye. Or the Death Star ready to shoot its planet-destructing laser. Or Jean Grey turning into the Phoenix. Actually, I really don’t care about what the hell is going on here—it just looks amazing.

And the fact is that, even while this M4.7-class solar flare ended before any coronal mass ejection happened, it doesn’t make it look less scary. According to NASA, “this image is shown in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength that is typically colorized in teal and that provided the most detailed picture of this particular flare.”

A Comparison of NASA’s Rockets and Spaceships Throughout History.

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via americaspace.org

At first look, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) looks like the perfect rocket: heavy lifting launch vehicle that promises to be more versatile, powerful, and durable than anything that has preceded it. But there are major threats hanging over the rocket stacking the odds against it ever leaving the ground.

By design, SLS is pretty incredible. It’s central piece is a liquid fuelled core stage modelled off the space shuttle’s external tank. The core stage is flanked by two boosters that will enable early Block 1 and Block 1A versions of the rocket to lift 70 metric tons into Earth orbit. A small “kick” stage will give payloads on these smaller rockets the extra push for distant targets like the Moon. The later “evolved” SLS will feature a second stage that will facilitate lifting 130 metric tons into orbit. All three versions will be adaptable for manned spacecraft or cargo depending on the mission’s needs. As a point of reference, the evolved SLS will be as powerful as the Saturn V and less than 50 feet taller.

NASA Timeline “Walking On Air” - Amazing show of Earth’s Lights

via nasa.gov

This video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station. Set to the song “Walking in the Air,” by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers around the world, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays.