Space & Spaceflight

You Can Explore These Remote Astronomical Observatories on Street View

By nature, astronomical observatories have to be remote—far away from humans and cities and light pollution. That makes these extraordinary facilities difficult to visit, unless you’ve got Google Street View. Three of Chile’s most remote observatories are now open to the digital tourist, and we’ve found you some of the coolest views. Very Large Telescope…

Look at the Weird and Wonderful Worlds That Exist Beyond Neptune

From tiny balls of rock to giant egg-shaped objects, there’s a rich and varied array of alien worlds that sit outside the orbit of Neptune. You’re looking at the ones that the European Space Agency’s satellite Herschel has spotted. In fact, there are 1,400 cold worlds in a region of the Solar System beyond the…

The First Vine From Outer Space Packs One Earth Orbit Into Six Seconds

Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this Vine shot from an observation window on the International Space Station this week. It shows one full orbit of the ISS around planet earth. It’s the first Vine recorded from outer space, and it’s literally out of this world. Reid is following in a great tradition of outer-space social media…

Stadium-Sized “Beast” Asteroid Will Nearly* Smash Into Earth Tomorrow

Asteroid 2014 HQ 124, a.k.a. The Beast, is a football stadium-sized behemoth, estimated at nearly a quarter of a mile wide. And on Sunday, it’s gonna come perilously close to our beloved home planet. How close? Just a mere 777,000 miles away. In space terms, that’s about as close as it gets. Thankfully, NASA is…

NASA’s Using Space Laser to Download Video From Orbit at Gigabit Speeds

NASA’s latest data download just covered way more distance, and contained way more awesome, than any earthbound file transfer: the agency beamed a high-def video down from the International Space Station this week using a high-powered laser. Go ahead and give your WiFi router a good stern look. The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science project,…

This Is a Star Exploding 12.1 Billion Years Ago

You’re looking back in time. A long, long, long way back in time. This is an image of a star exploding just after the Big Bang happened. This gamma ray burst was detected by Southern Methodist University in Dallas on April 19th, and because of the vast size of the Universe it’s taken a staggering…

No, this isn’t the Eye of Sauron: it’s an amazing image of the ringed star HR 4796A, captured by the new Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope atop Cerro Paranal in Chile. The newly installed SPHERE filters out light to acquire exceptionally sharp images like these—unlike any telescope before it.…

Report: NASA Can’t Afford Manned Missions to Mars

A large-scale review of NASA’s human spaceflight program has revealed that it doesn’t have the budget to successfully undertake manned missions to Mars. The report—a 286-page monster by the National Research Council—took 18 months and, ironically, $3.2 million to perform. The main conclusion: the space agency currently has an unsustainable strategy for landing human feet…

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter sunshield undergoes thermal testing. The infrared image on the right shows the temperature of the surface; the red region is at a toasty 380 Celsius or 715 Fahrenheit. [ESA]

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Everything Wrong With the Movie Gravity

Gravity is a positively stunning, occasionally horrifying cinematic masterpiece. Of course, that said, it’s got its share of problems. And no one has been more irked by these discrepancies than everyones favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now, you can listen to the man himself sound off on every single scientific inaccuracy in delightful detail. And…

This Six Minute Satellite Studies Star Nurseries

Not every scientific exploration of the cosmos requires a multi-year, multi-billion dollar effort a la the Hubble Space Telescope Program. In fact, sometimes all it requires is a reusable sounding rocket, an ultraviolet camera, and six minutes in space. Built by a team of researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and dubbed the…

How an Organizational Breakdown at NASA Let the Challenger Lift Off

The “massive malfunction” that killed seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 also forever changed NASA, an agency that seemed infallible. What breakdown in the decision-making process led to the shuttle lifting off? The organizational structure of NASA itself played a bigger role than you might imagine. In a new 20-minute documentary produced…

This close-up view of the Moon’s dark south shows its pock-marked surface, captured by the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft. It uses 40 individual images to cover an area of about 500 x 150 km. You can see an annotated map of the same view here. [ESA]

WSJ: Google Spending $1 Billion on Satellites to Cover Earth in Wi-Fi

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google plans to spend over $1 billion on a fleet of satellites that will be used to provide internet to parts of the world that currently lack digital connections. According to “people familiar with the project,” Google will use 180 “small, high-capacity satellites” that will orbit the Earth…

One Man’s Crazy Quest To Build a Tiny House on the Moon

There’s no end to fantasies about living on the moon. Actually possible moon bases, fictional Nazi moon bases, insane Newt Gingrich moon bases. Swedish artist Mikael Genberg has a more modest goal: one, tiny, uninhabited lunar house by 2015. Of course it takes a whole lot to make that possible. First there’s the matter of…

Virgin Galactic Is Finally Cleared for U.S. Take-Off

It came to light earlier this year that, despite promising to fly you through space, Virgin Galactic didn’t actually have Federal Aviation Administration approval to take off from the U.S.. Now, it’s struck a deal which should see it able to take to the skies. https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-doesnt-have-faa-permission-to-fly-you-1506559077 The company, already deep in testing, has signed a…

The new SpaceX Dragon V2: Everything you need to know

This is the new SpaceX Dragon V2, an incredible spaceship that—at last—feels worthy of the beginning of the 21st century. SpaceX claims that it is capable of taking seven astronauts to orbit and then soft-land anywhere on Earth using retro-rockets and retractile legs. Here’s how it works. https://gizmodo.com/first-look-at-dragon-v2-the-first-manned-spaceship-by-1583376826

NASA’s Lost Satellite Just Made Its First Contact With Earth in 17 Years

It’s official: ISEE-3, the 36-year-old satellite that NASA left for dead over a decade ago, is back in touch with humankind. This afternoon, a group of citizen scientists who raised almost $160,000 to fund the process of taking control of ISEE-3 announced that two-way contact has been established with the little satellite that could. So…

These Are NASA’s (Ugly) New Astronaut Shoes

On Thursday, NASA is sending the astronauts on the International Space Station a new pair of shoes. These so-called ForceShoes are not for space walks. They’re actually a high tech measurement device that helps NASA scientists gain a better understanding of the effects that heavy loads have on astronauts’ bodies. ForceShoes sort of work like…

The Moon’s Internet Connection Is Probably Faster than Yours

Not happy with your internet speeds? Worried about it getting worse? There’s a simple solution: Just move to the Moon. Researchers just beamed Wi-Fi there, and the connection is probably faster than anything you’ve got in your neighborhood. Moon Wi-Fi has been a long time coming, but researchers at NASA and MIT have now made…