For the first time in history, butterfly larvae—who were only six days old at launch time—have hatched in space. It happened on November 10, 2009, as part of the STS-129 "Butterflies in Space" experiment, on board the International Space Station. I can only imagine their confusion as they discovered there was no gravity. I don't have to imagine how itchy I feel by just looking at these images. [Flickr via Popular Science]

In the photo I'm holding the latest gadget developed by our military. The device works in two modes. One allows eavesdropping on our colleagues in the American segment. You can … record all their conversations. Also, the device can be used for martial arts training - to be prepared for an alien attack on the Russian segment of the ISS. Guys, it's just a joke, I hope you realize! It's not some weapon or a spy gadget. Just an old pump that Roma and I replaced!

Surayev is the current flight engineer at the ISS, and the first Russian cosmonaut with a blog from space. It seems a lot more fun than the dry American's. [Roscosmos—In Russian via Russia Today via Wired]

The former fire-breather—who originally founded the Cirque du Soleil—went to space in September on board a Soyuz spacecraft, after paying $34.7 million.

He did a show from the International Space Station denouncing the shortage of clean water in some parts of the water. Nobody laughed. He then got a cream pie splashed on his face. Still nobody laughed. [Daily Mail]

"I'm a person with a pretty high spirit, who's there to crack jokes and make jokes to those guys, and while they're sleeping, you know, I'll be tickling them," Laliberte said.

Laliberte even has a pocket full of red clown noses to give to the crew. Oooh boy...this is going to be the longest ISS mission ever. If they can handle this, Mars should be no sweat. Fortunately, this will be the last wealthy, eccentric space tourist the crew will have to deal with for quite some time. Astronauts from the US will take up the extra seats on Soyuz missions in order to travel back and forth from the ISS while the shuttle program transitions. [Yahoo via Neatorama]

Buzz was up there as part of a program by NASA and Disney to encourage students to study science, technology and math. He'll be honored in a parade at Disney's Magic Kingdom-along with his space station crewmates and veteran Buzz Aldrin-on October 2nd.

Too. Freakin'. Cute. To infinity and beyond! [Orlando Sentinel and Newslite | Photo by Tony Landis/NASA]

Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there, and everywhere else.

Click on the image to zoom in. You can see downtown Manhattan—south, where the towers were—, with the East River and Brooklyn on the top, and the Hudson and New Jersey on the bottom.

In the anniversary of the attack, let's take a few minutes to reflect on the stupidity of all violence, and think about those who fell that day, and everyone affected by these attacks and any other coward terrorist act in the world. [NASA]

The ISS was flying 220 miles over the island of Matua when the volcano erupted in a pyroclastic flow, a howling mass of ash and gas that moves at 130 miles per hour, reaching temperatures up to 1,112ºF (600ºC). Such a terrible mayhem, yet so beautiful. [NASA]

Instead, as seen in this condensed video, they wrap up the last of the EVAs for mission STS-128 (completed Saturday). Total EVA time was an impressive 7 hours, 1 minute.

Early in the video, that first helmet cam glimpse of Earth, so many, many miles below, is completely and utterly breathtaking. Trivia: They were passing over South America at the time. [YouTube via Tom's Astronomy Blog]

Jump to 8:40 to see this impressive array of laptops and screens, upside down in the International Space Station. Or downside sideways. Or left to right to back and then up a bit. Or wherever the hell they are. The video shows some of the highlights from the seventh day—September 3—of space shuttle Discovery's mission STS-128, now docked to the ISS.

I wonder if they transmit their Wi-Fi signals using their pointy nipple antennas—because you know that in space it's cold, so your nipples get hard, and therefore conduct wireless signals a lot better than relaxed nipples. [Boing Boing]

I wonder where it will fit in this cool step-by-step ISS construction timeline. [USA Today]

Way up. The answer? They were all the direct result of NASA products and research initially conducted for space travel.

The drill, for instance, was created in 1971, when NASA tapped Black & Decker to build a cordless, battery-power tool for lunar voyages and space walks. The smoker detector, on the other hand, was installed on Skylab in the 1970s to warn astronauts of mission- and life-ending fire. Finally, the LZR, long an antagonist to anyone racing against Michael Phelps in an Olympic pool, was created using materials developed by NASA to fight chafing on space walks and certain high g-force situations.

Radar magazine has a cool list of eleven more where that came from, including braces, swipe cards and even a rose-scented perfume. When you wear underwear in space for a month straight, things get stinky. [Radar via Neatorama]

His lithium hydroxide CO2 scrubber broke, allowing the lethal gas to build up to dangerous levels. Lithium hydroxide is a corrosive alkali hydroxide, a white hygroscopic crystalline material that is used in filters to purify air. For unknown reason, the filtering mechanism didn't work, and the CO2 wasn't correctly processed. Cassidy didn't notice any apparent effect, but the spacewalk came to a sudden ending after Houston noticed that things weren't right at all inside his suit.

His words after getting into the ISS airlock: "I'm just going to sit here and wait for Dave and enjoy the view."

Balls of titanium, I tell you. [Aviation Week]

Worse still, it may be clogged, although not with the kind of stuff you'd think. Nay, no plunger will help in this case, as the clog is chemical in nature, and may have seeped into the figurative space station woodwork.

Unfortunately, mission control and the astronauts have few leads into why the multi-million dollar Russian-built space john crapped the bed for a second time in the past two years. Previously, the toilet was so crippled by whatever it was the astronauts were eating up there that the fix required an emergency replacement pump delivery from space shuttle Discovery.

For now, the 13 crew members on board have to split their number one's and two's between the remaining ISS toilet and one aboard the shuttle. If another toilet fails, the crew can fall back on Apollo-era waste collection bag, which is nice because we're currently celebrating that mission's 40th anniversary. [BBC]

SpaceX launched a Malaysian satellite into orbit using the two-stage Falcon, a rocket developed and built from scratch by the company. The satellite, called RazakSAT, is designed to take high resolution pictures of Malaysia.

If all goes as planned, SpaceX will soon deliver material to the International Space Station in the future. [SpaceX]

According to NASA, these are roads and circular fields in the Egyptian desert, as photographed from the International Space Station. I don't know about you, but I swear I saw labels printed there. [Boston.com]

Both the Russian MIR and United States' Skylab had a permanent crew of three. The International Space Station also had three astronauts until last Friday, when ESA astronaut Frank De Winne, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk arrived onboard the Soyuz TMA-15. Together with the other three existing members, they have become the Expedition 20 mission crew, the first 6-member resident crew ever in a orbital outpost. [Hyperbola]

It's an astronaut doing his Extra-Vehicular Activity número dos during last month's Discovery mission to the orbital complex. I can help it but marvel at the scale of the station—in case you weren't amazed already by our comparison of sci-fi spaceships vs the ISS. Sure it's not the Federation's orbital base, but for primitive sentient forms without warp drives, it is pretty cool. [Astronomy Picture]

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It just happened in the International Space Station, where the new urine recycling system is now fully armed and operational. According to flight engineer Mike Barrat, this is great:

This has been the stuff of science fiction. Everybody's talked about recycling water in a closed loop system, but nobody's ever done it before. Here we are today with the first round of recycled water. We're really happy for this day and for the team that put this together. This is the kind of technology that will get us to the moon and farther.

In fact, without this system, any long trip up there—not just going up and then down like in the Apollo missions—would be impossible. Humans need water, and water takes a lot of space, so we need a way to recycle any waste liquid into drinkable water.

So if we want to send people to the stars, this is the only way to do it. And actually, it is not really that gross. Think about all the crap that tap water has: Chemicals, germs, and all kinds of ugly things lurking in the pipes and reservoirs. Up there, the water is as pure as it can be.

OK, for once, I'm glad I'm not an astronaut. [UPI—Thanks Genevieve]

They just ended their crew day, so they're watching it now, or just finishing it up. They can go all day without seeing each other, so this is a good chance to get together.

You know, pop some corn, open some beers, and then go to the Unity node to hang out with the buddies watching a damn good space movie. All thanks to one of the astronauts, Michael Barratt, a Trekkie who requested to see the film when it came out. He didn't want to miss it, so NASA encoded it and beamed it up for them, Scotty-style. [NYT—Thanks Genevieve]