Space & Spaceflight

What We Used to Think the Earth Looked Like From Space

It’s nearly impossible for us to imagine how the Earth might look to someone who’s only ever seen it from a local’s vantage point. But thanks to the Library of Congress, we don’t have to imagine—newly posted images of 19th century drawings show us exactly what humans thought the Earth looked like far before we…

ISS Crew “Flew Blind” on Their Way Back to Earth

While exciting in some ways—homecoming, yay!—the trip home from the International Space Station is a scary enough journey even when everything goes right. Now imagine doing it with no height sensors to tell you how far from the ground you are and when to brace for impact. That’s exactly what happened earlier week. Two Russian…

Saturn Looks Simply Stunning From Cassini

Saturn’s never looked more majestic than in this beautiful high-resolution image captured recently by Cassini. Snapped using the satellite’s wide-angle camera on June 15, the picture shows the planet from 657,000 miles away and 17 degrees above the ringplane. Each pixel represents about 37 miles. But forget the technical detail: it just looks beautiful. [NASA]…

A Brief History of Animals and Rocket Launches Not Getting Along

By now you’ve no doubt already shed a tear for Spacetoad, who met his fiery, glorious end during a NASA rocket launch earlier this week. But did you know that he’s just the latest in a long line of animals who have run afoul of our nation’s space program? https://gizmodo.com/a-frog-got-too-close-to-a-nasa-launch-and-well-this-h-1300166953 What follows is a look…

It’s Official: Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System

After months of back and forth, scientists now agree that NASA’s Voyager 1 has become the first manmade object to leave the solar system. And it only took 36 years to make the 12 billion mile-long journey. https://gizmodo.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-we-have-left-the-solar-system-up-5991527 It’s obviously a major milestone for space exploration which is probably why scientists have been arguing for…

Astronauts Arrive Home in a Brilliant Ball of Fire

Without any context, it looks like something has gone terribly, terribly wrong in the photo above taken around midnight last night. But that little ball engulfed in flames is doing just fine—and so are the three members of the International Space Station Expedition 36 that were snuggly inside and on their way home. The Soyuz…

Distant Ruins: How Scientists Hunt Space for Dead Alien Civilizations

‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ says Ozymandias’s ruined statue in the desert of Shelley’s imagination. Shelley’s sonnet is often interpreted as a sober warning that human works are fleeting, but when I read it as a young boy it kindled a sense of adventure; it suggested a wonderfully mysterious past beneath my…

Scientists Discover Unique Ingredients of Life in Meteorite Fragments

It’s rare for meteorites falling to Earth to remain intact—only five to ten make it each year—but the ones that do could contain the secrets of the universe or, even better, clues about the origins of life. And it looks like the meteorite that lit up the California sky last year did just that. A…

Tiny Satellite Antennas Are the Coolest Party Balloons You Never Had

There’s a small army of adorable, little, (sometimes) phone-powered satellites out in space, circling the globe. And while they’re damn impressive for their size, they face some challenges. They don’t have much room for antennas, for instance. But MIT’s new inflatable balloon antennas should change all that. https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-most-adorable-satellites-can-fit-in-the-palm-5949332 MIT has developed two flavors of antenna.…

Does Space Go On Forever?

Infinity is one of those mind-boggling concepts that even manages to confuse some of the smartest scientists. But when it comes to the universe, is it infinite or just… big? Fact is, it depends on how you’re looking at things. Even if the universe is finite in size, it could perhaps be infinite. Wait, what?…

This Celestial Caterpillar May Not Become A Stellar Butterfly

IRAS 20324+4057 is a mouthful, and it’s about 4,500 light years away, but it’s also a star on the move. It’s expanding to form a new star, but it’s unclear how massive that new star will be. “Energetic” wind and light is displacing a lot of the gas and dust that would normally go into…

East Coasters: Watch Tonight’s NASA Launch From Your Yard, Here’s How

For the longest time, Floridians had all the fun, getting to see NASA rockets launch into the night sky. Tonight, folks from North Carolina to Maine get to join that club, by watching the first moon mission to launch from NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia. It’s just about as easy as walking outside, but…

Oh hey, NASA launched its official Instagram account today. So far it’s all moon-related, anticipating tonight’s launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, but it’s definitely worth a follow. [NASA]

Watch a Virgin Galactic Test Flight from Onboard the Engine

This is what a Virgin Galactic supersonic flight with the SpaceShipTwo looks like, up close and personal. It’s not quite space, but it’s still damn gorgeous to watch. Virgin Galactic conducted its second supersonic test flight over the Mojave desert. After being released from the WhiteKnightTwo mothership at 42,000 feet, SpaceShipTwo fired a column of…

You Wouldn’t Want To Be Inside This NASA Spin Test

This is a picture of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) observatory, which is due to launch tomorrow—but it’s spinning fast enough to make you feel really quite sick. In fact, it’s being tested on a spin table to make sure it’s stable at high speeds. Hence the blur: because it’s rotating at…

The Newest Gravity Trailer Makes Space Look Like a Scary Roller Coaster

Are you ready for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity? Alternatively, are you ready for a panic attack to melt your brain into grey ooze? This latest trailer basically takes you on a roller coaster of fear through the gigantic emptiness of space. You’ll see Sandra Bullock twist and turn and spin and basically lose all control and…

How We Go Looking For Life on Other Planets

There are, as best we can estimate, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. (There may be more.) Average galaxies carry the weight of hundreds of billions of stars. If a habitable planet whirls around just one star in every million, the number of worlds which could harbor life would number in the quadrillions.…

This Dried-Up Salt Lake Lets Satellites Set Their White Balance

This image shows a great white expanse on the surface of Earth, but it’s not snow or super-fine sand: in fact, it’s a dried up salt lake in Turkey called Lake Tersakan—and satellites even use it as a calibration tool. The second biggest lake in Turkey and one of the largest saline lakes in the…

Hubble Captured a Huge, Light-Year-Long Flaming Space Monster

This beautifully bright, light-year-long heap of gas and dust particles was caught by the Hubble telescope hurtling through space on its way to becoming a star some 4,500-odd light years away. And this little cosmic caterpillar-that-could is all the more incredible when you know what it’s fighting against. Located in what’s called the Cygnus OB2…

The Giant Telescope That Helps Take the Sharpest Space Photos Yet

The Hubble Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos but the venerable telescope has been orbiting for nearly a quarter century and is quickly nearing the end of its already-extended service life. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, telescope technology has advanced significantly since the Hubble went up in 1990. And by the…