Space & Spaceflight

Learn How to Make Milky Way Time-Lapses in About 20 Minutes

It’s no secret that Gizmodo loves Milky Way time-lapses. They’re an awe-inspiring fixture on the internet we can’t help but highlight. But astrophotographer (jealous of that job title) Ian Norman wants to transform us from just casual observers into active creators. Published on his lovely website, Lonely Speck, Norman describes step-by-step what any aspiring astrophotographer…

7 Of Mankind’s Biggest Screw-Ups In Space

Space isn’t having a great few months — from the exploding mishaps of Orbital Science’s Antares rocket, to the terrible tragedy of Virgin Galactic’s test flight, and the yay–but-oh-shit rollercoaster that’s been the ESA’s comet landing, things aren’t going entirely to plan. This isn’t without precedent, though: if you shoot enough things into the sky…

Rosetta’s Lander Is Now Asleep on the Comet, Waiting For a Brighter Sun

Goodnight, Philae, though not, we hope, goodbye. The lander is now in sleep mode, keeping “all instruments and most systems on board shut down.” Thankfully, engineers managed to gather all the collected comet data before Philae’s batteries were depleted. If we’re lucky, it may wake up when it gets closer to the Sun. From now…

The Last Ditch Attempt to Prolong Philae’s Life on a Comet

With Philae’s battery dying, the Rosetta mission’s ground controllers have decided to make one last go at it. The probe had ended up in the shadow of a cliff after a botched touchdown, unable to gather enough energy with its solar panels. Ground control is going to try rotating Philae so one of its larger…

The Futuristic Technology That Could Enable Interstellar Travel

Technically savvy scientists and engineers have put much effort into conceiving far-future technologies that might make possible near- light-speed travel. You can learn a lot about their ideas by browsing the web. It will take many centuries for humans to make any of those ideas real, I think. But they do convince me that ultra-advanced…

The Sahara desert, over southeastern Algeria, sure looks unwelcoming. With humans unwilling to spend weeks surveying such a space, satellites do the job for them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re revealing evidence of soil degradation and overwhelming dehydration—a result of the area seeing less than 10 mm of rainfall per year. [ESA]

The First Close-Up Image of Comet 67P From the Philae Lander

Followinga successful day in space yesterday, which saw humankind land a spacecraft on a comet for the first time ever, the Philae Lander has now sent back the first close-up images of the surface it now rests upon. The image above is a two-photo composite captured by the spacecraft’s CIVA imaging system, showing that the…

SpaceShipTwo’s Surviving Pilot Ejected Into -70 Degree Air at 50,000 Feet

Investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong with thetragic crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. While the National Transportation Safety Board has been looking into an issue with the braking system, the agency has released details from surviving pilot Peter Siebold about how he managed to escape the exploding spacecraft. When SpaceShipTwo…

Mankind Has Landed on a Comet

Over 10 years ago, the Rosetta spacecraft left Earth to begin a long, lonely journey toward a ball of ice and rock. That four billion mile trek finally ended today, capped off with a nail-biting finale where Rosetta’s washing-machine-sized lander, Philae, became the first thing we humans have ever landed on a comet. Holy shit.…

These Are the First Images Sent Back to Earth By Rosetta and Philae

This morning marks one of the most exciting moments in space exploration in years: Rosetta’s lander, Philae, will touch down on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It’s still making its way down to the comet, but the little lander that could is already snapping photos and sending them home. Rosetta and Philae, which each have adorably anthropomorphized…

Scientists Are Sending Data-Carrying Spiral Lasers Across Entire Cities

Twisted laser beams may just be the key to unlimited bandwidth in the future—and now a team of scientists has used them to beam data through the air, from one side of Vienna to the other. We’ve already seen twisted laser beams transmit data at speeds of over 1.6 terabits per second via fiber-optic cable.…

Rosetta’s lander is now on its way to comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko

Everything is going according to plan. The lander Philae is now flying to the comet, en route for touchdown. Soon we will have images of Rosetta floating in space and Philae on its way to the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Follow the live coverage here.

Watch the Rosetta Spacecraft’s Comet Landing on Live Webcast Here

About 24 hours from now, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe will deliver a tiny lander to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it rockets through our solar system. You can watch the whole thing live, right here. The gadget-laden podnamed Philae will touch down on the ridiculously huge comet (which also apparently sings) sometime around 11:00 am…

Here’s A Thirty-Year History Of Getting Closer To Comets

Rosetta‘s lander Philae is warming up to land on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in just a few hours. It will be our first-ever attempt at touching down on a dirty chunk of ice in space. But how close have we gotten to a comet before? Up close and personal with the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from just…

Galaxy ESO 137-001 tears through its neighbours in the vast Norma cluster, in the process losing most of the gas it needed to make the its generation of stars. Stellar suicide, in other words. [ESO/M. Fumagalli via New Scientist]

Elon Musk Confirms He’s Building A 700-Strong Satellite Fleet

Earlier this weekend, a Wall Street Journal report linked Elon Musk, the big entrepreneur success story, with a plan to use a fleet of small satellites to achieve global internet coverage. Although he hasn’t mentioned the internet part, he just confirmed the satellite part on Twitter, and said we’ll have to wait a few months…

Google’s Spending $1 Billion on an Old NASA Hangar, No One Knows Why

Planetary Ventures LLC, a Google shell company, just signed a very expensive lease on a very large building and airfield in Silicon Valley. The lease in question will cost the search giant $1.16 billion over the term of 60 years. The building and airfield in question is the Moffett Field, where Google’s founders have been…

Hubble’s Latest Images Reveal a Rich Seam of Galaxies

Hubble’s latest images reveal the detail of a super-rich galaxy cluster called Abell 1413. And isn’t it damn pretty? Nestled between the constellations of Leo (The Lion) and Coma Berenices, this collection of over 300 galaxies is over 2 billion light-years from Earth. This particular image is dominated by a large elliptical galaxy called MCG+04-28-097,…

Report: Elon Musk Is Next In Line To Connect The Third World

It’s never been a better time to be a budding third-world internet entrepreneur: Google’s trying to use balloons to bring you online, Facebook wants to use drones to upload your selfies, and now a third big Silicon Valley name is lending a helping hand. According to a WSJ report, Elon Musk is planning to launch…

What Actually Goes Down on the International Space Station

The main purpose of the International Space Station is to provide an international laboratory for experiments within the space environment. Which, despite all our technological advances, is nearly impossible to replicate here on Earth. Because for many of those experiments, the key parameter is—you guessed it—weightlessness. While we do have a vacuum chamber tower facility…