First close-up of Pluto

More to come...

If the Moon Were Only One Pixel: A Tediously Accurate Scale Model of the Solar System

Some pretty epic scrolling on this page.

Planet orbiting in the habitable zone discovered just 12ly away

Awesome!

A planet with conditions that could support life orbits a twin neighbour of the sun visible to the naked eye, scientists have revealed.
The world is one of five thought to be circling Tau Ceti, a star just 12 light years away that is almost identical to the sun.
Astronomers estimate the Tau Ceti planets to be two to six times bigger than Earth. One of them, with five times the Earth's mass, lies in the star's "habitable zone".
Also known as the "Goldilocks zone", this is the orbital region that is neither too hot nor too cold to allow liquid surface water and, potentially, life. Details of the discovery are to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Full Article...

Amazing Northern Lights Time-lapse

Desperately want to see them in real life some time. 2013 is solar maximum, who's up for a trip? :)

NASA astronauts performing gymnastics aboard Skylab

Skylab had a much wider room than the ISS has which allowed the astronauts to do all these maneuvers. First part is from the great documentary When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

Space Soundwaves

What could possibly go wrong?

The Mars Science Laboratory has been launched towards Mars. Only the first few steps in a long series of single point of failures that can all waste 2 billion dollars.

Time Lapse View from Space

Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program is a multi-genre game where the player can create his own space program. In KSP, you must build a space-worthy craft, capable of flying it's crew out into space, without killing them. At your disposal is a collection of parts, which must be assembled to create a functional ship. Each part has it's own function and will affect the way a ship flies (or doesn't). So strap yourself in, and get ready to try some Rocket Science!

Main Features:

• The Vehicle Assembly Building. Allows players to build spacecraft out of any imaginable combination of parts.
• Fully-fledged, Physics-based Flight Simulation ensures everything will fly (and crash) as it should.
• Procedural Terrain delivers detailed terrain at a vast scale. The Kerbal Planet is 600km in radius!
• Mod-enabled, allows players to create new content and modify the game.
• Ship systems. Keep an eye out for engine temperatures and fuel levels, and try not to explode.
• Build ships with multiple stages, and jettison parts away as they burn out.
• Full control over the staging sequence allows for complex ships and advanced functionality.

The game is still in development, but it's already a lot of fun, and it can be downloaded for free. Below there are some videos of people doing it wrong. There are also videos of people doing well, but it's more fun to find out yourself how to build a good rocket.

I've so far failed at going orbital. It is definitely possible to orbit, use transfer orbits, and deorbit, as this video shows. There are also tips on the forum. I did manage to reach a virtual escape velocity, going vertically at 2800m/s, it did slowly tick down so I guess it would land again after weeks if not more of waiting :)

I really like building the rockets and also experimenting with silly designs. I love how the different stages detach and how rockets can spin out of control. PRO-TIP: In the assembly building there is a circle button on the top left which you can click to the desired symmetry and then the parts you attach will instantly be spaced that way.

The future of this game also looks bright with all the planned features, such as much more rocket parts, and all kinds of missions such as satellite deployment, or landing on the moon and other planets.

The Dark Side of Saturn

Source

More cool pics

Relevant

Space Shuttle and Space Station

How was it made? :-)

Supernova vs (dusty) Galaxy

"Far away, long ago, a star exploded. Supernova 1994D, visible as the bright spot on the lower left, occurred in the outskirts of disk galaxy NGC 4526."

First spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury

"For the first time, Earth has a regular orbiting eye-in-the-sky spying on the solar system's smallest and strangest planet, Mercury.

...

NASA's spacecraft called Messenger successfully veered into a pinpoint orbit Thursday night after a 6 1/2-year trip and 4.9 billion miles and tricky maneuvering to fend off the gravitational pull of the sun. It is the fifth planet in our solar system that NASA has orbited, in addition to the Earth and the moon.

...

"It was right on the money," Messenger's chief engineer, Eric Finnegan, said. Messenger is in orbit that brings it as close as 120 miles above the planet's surface. "This is as close you can possibly get to being perfect."

Mercury is not only difficult to get to, but it's has some of the most extremes in the solar system. Temperatures there swing wildly by 1,100 degrees.

...

Messenger, which cost NASA $446 million, was launched in 2004. Next month it should start transmitting pictures and investigate Mercury's mysterious magnetic field and unusual density." - read more...

Space Shuttle Launch viewed from an airplane

What a beautiful thing to see, but the camera quality of the video is quite bad. NASA should do flights like this with professional equipment to show the people how awesome space flight is.

ASM-135 ASAT

The ASM-135 ASAT is an air-launched anti-satellite multi stage missile from the cold war era. It is launched from a F-15A fighter jet making a supersonic zoom climb at an angle of 65 degree.

It used infrared sensors to home in on the target satellite. However, it did not know its own position and attitude with respect to the satellite and basically just kept its head in the direction of the target.

It was test-launched from a F-15 at an altitude of 12 km on 13 September 1985 and successfully destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite flying at an altitude of 555 km by hitting it with a relative speed of 6.6 km/s (24,000 km/h).

Quite amazing that it was able to hit the satellite.

Epic News day

I've been glued to various live streams covering the riots in Egypt all day. The whole day the front lines between the anti-Mubarak protesters and the pro-Mubarak supporters have moved up and down the main street. The thugs supporting Mubarak seem to have started the violence, at one point charging into the crowds with horses and camels, later they started throwing molotov cokctails, they also drove a bus into the crowds. At night the anti-Mubarak protesters fought back hard moving up, shielded with steel barriers, in a phalanx formation.
But much more was going on today. The NASA Kepler time announced the biggest find of exoplanets yet:

"We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone - a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Some candidates could even have moons with liquid water," said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the Kepler Mission’s science principal investigator. "Five of the planetary candidates are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars."
Planet candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. "We have found over twelve hundred candidate planets - that’s more than all the people have found so far in history," said Borucki. "Now, these are candidates, but most of them, I’m convinced, will be confirmed as planets in the coming months and years."
Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates, including one, Kepler-11, that scientists have been able to confirm that has no fewer than six planets.

Also a colossal winter storm in America covering two thirds of the country. It consists of snowstorms, blizzards, ice storms, and thundersnow.
More extreme weather as Cyclone Yasi becomes one of the biggest cyclones to ever hit Australia.

Finally the volcano Shinmoedake has been erupting in Japan, resulting in a massive explosion and pretty night lightning.

More pictures of the volcano and lightning.
Hard to keep up with, but a good excuse not to be working on my thesis.

Über panorama

Europe Covered in Snow

World Cloud Time-lapse (30 days)

I tried to find a world cloud time-lapse. Could not find a one of the whole world and longer than a day (anyone?). The BBC weather site shows the current world cloud map. I hacked the BBC ;) and found hourly infrared images of the last 30 days. Made you a time-lapse. Sorry dekus, another cloud time-lapse.

Now I want high resolution images and a full year.

Someone Stole their Bolts!

and they didn't notice!

"a technician removed twenty-four bolts securing an adapter plate to it without documenting the action. The team subsequently using the cart to turn the satellite failed to check the bolts before attempting to move the satellite."