Cassini Sippin' On Enceladus

Vote for Place of the Year 2015

Was 2015 the year of Pluto? Or does its exit from the Eurozone make Greece Place of the Year? Now is the time to vote and tell us which place made the most history this year.

In the meantime, reflect on 2014 Place of the Year, Scotland.

Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The last shuttle

Chasing Storms at 17,500mph

Flying 250 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station has given me the unique vantage point from which to view our planet. Spending a year in space has given me the unique opportunity to see a wide range of spectacular storm systems in space and on Earth. 

The recent blizzard was remarkably visible from space. I took several photos of the first big storm system on Earth of year 2016 as it moved across the East Coast, Chicago and Washington D.C. Since my time here on the space station began in March 2015, I’ve been able to capture an array of storms on Earth and in space, ranging from hurricanes and dust storms to solar storms and most recently a rare thunder snowstorm.

Blizzard 2016

Hurricane Patricia 2015

Hurricane Joaquin 2015

Dust Storm in the Red Sea 2015

Dust Storm of Gobi Desert 2015

Aurora Solar Storm 2015

Aurora Solar Storm 2016

Thunderstorm over Italy 2015

Lightning and Aurora 2016

Rare Thunder Snowstorm 2016

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Space Shuttle Endeavour mounted atop one of NASA’s modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

A vintage NASA-commissioned Rick Guidice painting gives a cutaway view of the inside of a space colony design known as the Stanford torus, a proposed habitat that would house 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents. The rotating, doughnut-shaped ring could have a diameter of around 2 kilometers, revolving once per minute to give about 1.0g of artificial gravity on the inside of the ring through centripetal force. A massive system of mirrors would provide the sunlight needed for daily activity, agriculture, and so forth. (NASA Ames Research Center)

Hey Venus

Apart Together

October 31, 2000 was the last day all humans were together on Earth. That day, the rocket containing the crew of Expedition 1 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and carried them to the International Space Station for a long-term stay. Fittingly, the mission left from the same launchpad that was used to launch Yuri Gagarin into space on April 2, 1961, which was the first time in history that all humans were not together on Earth. Ever since the Expedition 1 crew docked, there’s been an uninterrupted human presence on the ISS, which may continue until 2028 or 2030, by which time there may be humans on the Moon or Mars on a permanent basis. Will humans ever be only Earth-bound again?

BTW, I guess you could argue that the ISS isn’t really separate enough from Earth or that since regular commercial airplane flights began, humans have been separate from the Earth. You could also say that at any given time, thousands of people are in the air while jumping and therefore not on the Earth with the rest of us. I don’t find any of those arguments meaningful. Perhaps someday if space travel is more routine – “just popped up into orbit to visit my daughter” – and the human population is much more distributed, these same distinctions won’t hold, but for now the ISS is definitely apart from the Earth in a way that flying or jumping are not.

theconstantbuzz:

Father and son oberve Apollo 11 Launch © Ralph Crane 

The Curiosity Rover Captures a 1.8 Gigapixel Panorama of Mars

Late last year, NASA’s Curiosity rover took over a thousand photos of the Martian landscape while exploring a mountainside. NASA stitched the photos together and recently released this 1.8 gigapixel panorama of Mars (along with a mere 650 megapixel panorama, pictured above). Here’s a version you can pan and zoom:

And a narrated video of the panorama:

Both panoramas showcase “Glen Torridon,” a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. They were taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, when the mission team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Sitting still with few tasks to do while awaiting the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings from the same vantage point several days in a row.

I like how NASA is casually suggesting that the rover is just kinda taking some vacation snaps while waiting on friends.

The Sirens of Titan