By Brandon Russell |
A meteorite the size of a small boulder recently struck the moon with such force the impact was visible down here on Earth—to the naked eye. That means had you or I been looking up at the moon at the precise moment of impact, we’d…
By Brandon Russell |
NASA’s Mars Curiosity has again drilled into the barren Martian planet, puncturing a section 2.6-inches deep. The rock, known as Cumberland, gave NASA researchers the opportunity to remove a powdered sample that will then be delivered to Curiosity’s onboard analyzing instruments. NASA previously drilled into…
By Brandon Russell |
NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover—not to be confused with Curiosity—has concluded a 20 month-long study of an area that researchers believe has been “intensely altered by water.” In the nine years since Opportunity has been on Mars, the data is unlike anything researchers have seen. The…
By Brandon Russell |
After nearly five months in space, three members of the International Space Station Expedition 35 crew safely landed in a clearing to the southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. “Boy, that was quite a ride home,” said Chris Hadfield after successfully touching down. Hadfield, most notably, is…
By Adriana Lee |
Chances are, you’ve sung into a mirror gripping a hairbrush or lost yourself in your own air guitar virtuosity at some point. And why not? It’s easy to let the creativity flow in the comfort of your own house. And, it seems, that’s true no…
By Brandon Russell |
After discovering the ISS was leaking vital coolant for its power systems, NASA on Friday made the decision to send astronauts on an emergency spacewalk to fix the issue. And on Saturday morning, Thomas Marshburn and Chris Cassidy successfully replaced the troublesome pump. Did everyone…
By Adriana Lee |
Ever had a virus infect your Windows computer? If you thought that headache and irritation over your home computer was bad, imagine how the astronauts on the International Space Station felt when a Russian cosmonaut brought in an infected laptop in 2008. The computer carried…
By Brandon Russell |
Astronauts on Thursday noticed frozen ammonia flakes leaking from the International Space Station, though NASA said the issue poses no immediate threat to the crew. A lot can—and apparently will—go wrong when you’re thousands of miles from Earth, especially with such complicated systems involved. The…
By Roy Choi |
Google posted some amazing timelapse images today of from 1984 to 2012. The satellite images were collected over 40 years during a collaborative effort by NASA and the United State Geological Society. Google started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this archive available online.…
By Brandon Russell |
Maybe you’ve taken a picture from the world’s tallest building, at a concert or simply at the dinner table. But from space? That’s a first. NASA did just that through its PhoneSat mission, a project meant to discern whether or not smartphones are capable of…
By Brandon Russell |
Virgin Galactic on Monday successfully completed a rocket-powered test of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) aircraft, in the process breaking the sound barrier while soaring 55,000 feet high. In a flight that last around ten minutes, the momentous event is a first step toward Sir Richard Branson’s—who…
By Brandon Russell |
The above photo isn’t a world imploding in the Star Trek universe, but an actual hurricane currently ravaging Saturn’s north pole. It looks breathtakingly surreal, beautiful, something imagined you’d expect in a scene from the first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It’s absolutely real,…
By Ron Duwell |
Mad Men has enjoyed a successful run on AMC over the last few years, pulling in impressive ratings and slews of awards in the process. Its creators have done a fabulous job glamorizing the lives of 1960′s advertisers, but what about another important face of…
By Brandon Russell |
Elon Musk’s SpaceX again successfully demonstrated that the sky’s the limit with its Grasshopper prototype spacecraft, a ten-story tall Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) rocket. Fittingly, Musk used Earth Day to Tweet out a video of Grasshopper soaring to 820 feet—besting its previous height of…
By Brandon Russell |
Researchers have discovered what’s being considered the most Earth-like planets ever, orbiting in that rare Goldilocks Zone of their parent stars. If scientists are correct, and data from NASA’s Kepler mission is on the money, these three planets, located 1,200 and 2,700 light years from…
By Brandon Russell |
A new project, known as Mars One, will shuttle you to the neighboring planet, but not back. The nonprofit said on Tuesday it’s accepting video applications up through July, and will begin weeding out candidates for a journey scheduled in 2023. For now, the Netherlands-based…
By Adriana Lee |
We have a week to go before Earth Day arrives on April 22, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get your green on a little early. In fact, there’s a concerted effort to claim the whole of April as Earth Month. And why not? What’s…
By Brandon Russell |
The Earth won’t be around forever, but you and I won’t be alive to see the end. It sounds ominous, and a bit insane. But scientists believe that the sun will go through some incredible changes in about 1.1 billion years, culminating in a pretty…
By Brandon Russell |
A new research technique developed in collaboration by Japanese and New Zealand astronomers could introduce a better way to spot Earth-like planets. Through MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics), researchers say the new method could measure planets that fall out of the Sun-Earth distance scale—planets that…
By Sean P. Aune |
NASA has a daring plan to capture an asteroid weighing up to 500 tons and put it into orbit around the Moon. According to U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), the latest version of the federal budget includes $100 million earmarked for NASA’s asteroid-retrieval project. The plan…
By Sean P. Aune |
Voyager 1 appears to have finally left our solar system. Should an alien culture ever find it and play the infamous golden disc, what sounds will they hear? Ever since Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977, we have always heard about “the golden disc”…
By Roy Choi |
Some billionaire executives pick up hobbies like golf, fishing, buying a sports team, but not Jeff Bezos, he instead goes hunting, hunting for rockets. Jeff Bezos has funded a team to scour the Atlantic Ocean floor in search of rockets. Wednesday, Bezos posted on his…
By Brandon Russell |
After 35 years of careening through space—11.5 billion miles of constant traveling—a man-made object has crossed the threshold into the deepest unknown. Scientists on Wednesday announced new findings that suggest Voyager I has finally left our solar system, beyond the heliosphere and into a vast,…
By Brandon Russell |
This doesn’t really capture the scale of Mars’s Mount Sharp, a destination NASA’s Curiosity Rover will eventually explore, but it shows a geography that rises more than 3 miles above the Gale Crater floor. That’s taller than any mountain here in the contiguous states in…
