It’s time for the weekly round-up of all things Space-related. Settle down with a warm beverage, and prepare to lose far too much time clicking through to stories you missed during weekday chaos.
A crazy dust storm in China advanced dramatically in just 2 hours on April 23. Image credit: NASA/Earth Observatory. Read more about it here.
This is the last month of my trial period as an io9 Recruit. If I don’t make 300k US People for the month of May, I will no longer be writing here. If that fills you with a gasp of denial, spread the love by sharing out a story you liked from the Space site this week on the social media platform of your choice:
Stories from the Stargate science consultant (that’s me!): real atmospheric science lurking in Stargate: Atlantis “Brain Storm.”
I get concerned about too many landslide stories in one day, and teach you how to not die in a landslide. Because seriously, don’t die in a landslide. It would make me sad.
Jupiter’s moon Ganymede may have layers of ice and water within its ocean, making it a more interesting world with a better chance of producing alien critters.
Russia snarked at NASA to go full-out on their sanctions, to the amusement of physicists.
A National Parks photography contest leaves me dreaming of a road-trip vacation to the beautiful geological landscapes, and more than slightly awed at how cheap it is to visit.
Sand dunes on Mars are totally Star Trek communicator badges.
NASA picked a winning entry for the fashionable skin of its prototype Z2 space suit; opinions are highly mixed on whether or not this was a good thing.
Successful test flights everywhere! SpaceX had a semi-successful soft-landing during their ISS resupply run, then a fully successful soft-landing test for their new F9R rocket. Meanwhile, the prototype planetary explorer Morpheus had a successful test-flight using its hazard detection system to pick a soft landing spot.
Manned spaceflight history! How Snoopy became the mascot for safety, a new skin to the 2048 game featuring moonwalkers, and a bit of love for the world’s only moon-golfer, Alan Shepard.
A new study on the impact of long-term exposure to radiation in space is bad news for Fantastic Four fans. This continues on my radiation-obsession from last week, looking at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Salt ponds on Earth are pretty no matter where they are.
Curiosity produced some self-portraits, sparking a look at how those portraits are made, and how dusty Mars coats the pretty rover in a layer of grime.
Not new stories, but updates to the story of the missing girls in Nigeria.
A massive In Case You Missed It post covering the Space subsite for April, just in case you want to spiral down a recursive network of link-clicking
io9 has joined the roving Space Carnival, where space-science blogs contribute their coolest stories in one tidy list for your browsing pleasure. Carnival of Space #352 (we’re a bit late to the party) is being hosted on Everyday Spacer. Some contributions are from big-name blogs like Universe Today, while others are hidden away gems of astronomy-delight.
Finally, here’s my weekly curated list of space-related stories I thought were awesome that we didn’t cover on Space this week:
Computer models suggest graphene may work for desalinization.
Pensacola, Florida had an intense rainstorm. How intense? The most intense in its history.
The peculiar circumstances that lead to fossils are geologically unusual.
Foster the People visited NASA Johnson Space Center because sometimes musicians can play at astronauts instead of astronauts play at musicians.
NASA’s Dawn mission blog reached 100 posts, and celebrated with a neat summary.
Keeping things interesting when staring at thousands of images for the Dark Energy Survey.
Spherical cows and symmetry, and non-repeating symmetry.
How bad is the California drought? They conducted snow-pack measurements in t-shirts.
UK school children invited to design meals for eating in space.
Searching for Dark Skies in the neighbourhood.