Space & Spaceflight

A NASA Rocket Soars Into an Emerald Aurora

These are photos of a rocket from NASA’s GREECE mission blasting off into the beautiful Aurora Borealis over Venetie, Alaska earlier this week. I wish I could be that rocket. The GREECE mission, or Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics Electron Correlative Experiment, studies how structures form in an aurora. The sounding rocket was supposed to launch in February,…

Watching Planes Land From Space Is Like a Video Game Brought to Life

Ever wanted to watch the world—in real-time HD—from space? Well prepare to experience what it’d be life if the world was your very own video game and check out a few planes landing at the Bejiing airport. It’ll be the coolest planespotting you’ve ever done. What you see here is Skybox’s SkySat-1 turning its amazing…

Why Do Bacteria Thrive in Space?

For reasons that still aren’t well understood, bacteria proliferate in microgravity. Creating a potential recipe for disaster for humans stationed in space for long periods, bacteria’s love of low-g also raises an intriguing question: Why are they so comfortable there? Thriving Several years ago, astronauts began noticing that: Virulent bacteria such as E. coli and…

The Various Ways to Die Inside a Black Hole

Falling into a black hole never sounded like fun. How could it? Black holes are the darkest places in the universe, where not even light can escape the singularity’s immense gravitational pull. It wouldn’t be fun. But what, exactly, would happen? This is actually a bit of a debate amongst physicists, who lately can’t even…

Ice volcanoes… in SPACE! (That never gets old.)

Remember when Europa spewed water into space in December? NASA has tracked down where (they think) it came from. This is the official USGS basemap for Europa, compiled from the Galileo and Voyager missions and centered on the projected plume location at -65 degrees latitude, 183 degrees longitude. Think of this as our “Before,” image.…

What the Ukrainian Crisis Means for Astronauts in Space

Ever since NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, the only way to get up to the International Space Station is on a Russian Soyuz. That’s why the six humans currently orbiting in space—including two Americans and three Russians—might be paying attention to what’s happening on earth two hundred miles below. As tensions run…

Canada Wants to Send Its Astronauts to Space in Computer Shirts

Wearable technology has a long way to go. Sure, a smartwatch that lets you read text messages on your wrist is neat, and a pair of glasses that take pictures is innovative (or whatever). But what about technology we can really wear? Like clothes? Canada’s on the case. The land of hockey champions and Commander…

Real NASA Pics That Look Like Stills From Gravity

Nope, you’re not looking at stills from the Oscar-nominated film Gravity. They’re all real photos, straight from NASA, and they were all shot in space. Regardless of Gravity’s one major plot hole, it is a very good flick that at least visually, gives us a wonderfully accurate look at space and our beautiful blue marble.…

Amazing Views of Last Night’s UK Aurora Show

A combination of rare, high geomagnetic activity and cloud-free night skies treated many parts of the UK to an amazing aurora demonstration last night. Here are some of the finest photos that got snapped and posted to Twitter. Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the news in a different timezone—so check them out if you need…

Ecuador’s Mountains Sure Look Beautiful From Space

It may look more like modern art, but you’re actually looking at a the highlands of Ecuador seen from the European Space Agency’s Envisat. Near the top of the images you can see the outskirts of Quito—one of the highest capital cities in the world—as a series of white dots. Elsewhere, what looks like white…

This Sheet of Space-Bound Silicon Contains 1.75 Billion Transistors

This single 8 inch-diameter sheet of silicon is etched with 35 replicas of five different chips, each one destined to be sent into space. Those brave hands in the picture are holding around 1.75 billion transistors in total, with each of the circuits being made up of around 10 million transistors or basic circuit switches.…

The Number of Known Planets in the Universe Just Doubled

While you were hiding from the last bitter breezes of winter, NASA’s $600 million Kepler Space Telescope discovered a few new planets. Actually, Kepler data revealed 715 new exoplanets. That’s astonishing. It’s actually twice as many as we previously thought existed. The number of known Earth-sized planets also just quadrupled. This is pretty great news…

What Four Months on Mars Taught Me About Boredom

The scene: I’m in my closet-sized cabin, inside a white dome built to house a crew of six for four months as part of an isolation experiment. As a crew, we are working and living as ‘explorers’ stationed on the surface of ‘Mars’. Our colony is lifelike and NASA-funded, but it is situated in a…

Astronomersjust discoveredwater vapor on a moon of a nearby exoplanet, known as Tau Boötis b. It’s long been known that there’s water beyond Earth, like Jupiter’s moon Europa, so this new discovery suggests this might be a trend. [Space.com]

Here’s What a Solar Flare Looks Like In Different Wavelengths of Light

Yesterday, the sun spewed out an X-class solar flare. It hit its angriest peak just before 8pm last night, and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory—which is on sun watch 24/7—caught it on camera through six different wavelengths. Here’s a little explanation from NASA on the series of rainbow-hued shots you’re looking at: These SDO images from…

22 Amazing Observatories Where Our Radio Eyes Watch the Universe

Humans can only see visible light—the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. That’s why so hard to study celestial objects hidden behind cosmic dust. But radio astronomy reveals those parts of the Universe that can’t be seen in visible light—and the secrets of dust-shrouded galaxies like our lovely Milky…

Why the Same Side of the Moon Always Faces the Earth

One Moon “day” is approximately 29 1/2 Earth days. This rotation coincides with its orbit around the Earth so that we only see about 59% of the surface of the Moon from Earth. When the Moon first formed, its rotational speed and orbit were very different than they are now. Over time, the Earth’s gravitational…

The Great Lakes Are Even More Beautiful When They’re Nearly Frozen Over

For the first time since 1994 the Great Lakes are almost completely covered in ice, with only 12 percent remaining unfrozen. And now, thanks to NASA satellites, we can look upon this icy plain and despair—except that it’s actually quite beautiful. The average amount of ice cover for the Great Lakes is roughly 50 percent,…

Soviet and American Space Suits For Sale at This Other-Worldly Auction

On April 8th, the New York City branch of Bonhams will be hosting a “Space History” auction, and Gizmodo has been given a preview of the some of the historically unique, space age artifacts that will be for sale. From full-body Soviet space suits to a control panel once used on the space station Mir,…

Valeri Kubasov, Apollo-Soyuz Crewmember, Passed Away

Valeri Nikolayevich Kubasov, a retired Soviet cosmonaut, died on Wednesday, 19 February 2014, in Moscow at age 79. He was the second crew member of the legendary joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project to pass away, after Deke Slayton died in 1993. Kubasov flew two missions in the Soyuz program as a flight engineer: Soyuz–6 and…