The southern lights from space as photographed from the ISS by astronaut Ron Garan (@Astro_Ron), who is on his way back to Earth.
—via jtotheizzoe:(via Boing Boing)
vruz: aurora australis. we can haz them.
Reblogged from It's Okay To Be Smart
NASA Announces Plans for New Deep Space Rocket
—via astrotastic
vruz: the traditional apollo-like and saturn-V-like artistic depictions are in all likelihood incorrect anyway, without further information. modern orbital or at least suborbital launch systems will probably be used by 2030.
going to Mars would be great, but it really doesn’t make much sense to do anything like this on such grand scale unless you’re planning to make at least part of the project pay for itself doing some asteroid mining for metals and other materials which are rare and/or expensive to synthesise on earth.
so maybe both things are in the equation.
Reblogged from Astrotastic!
It’s time to take action – again
—via itsfullofstars:
On Wednesday, September 14, the U.S. Senate subcommittee overseeing NASA’s budget – the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies — will meet to “markup” the bill that will provide the space agency with the money it needs to do its job of exploring space.
The next day, Thursday, September 15, their markup will go the full committee on for their markup.
Somehow, the U.S. Senate has decided it can move quickly – to decide the fate of space exploration for the next year and beyond.Please send an urgent message to your Senators asking them to keep our exploring spacecraft flying!
Reblogged from It's Full of Stars
NASA using Android in Space
InfoQ
On September 1st, the Official Google Blog reported that two Android-based Nexus phones have been transported to the ISS in the last manned Space Shuttle mission ST-135. Researchers want to investigate how robots can help humans experiment and live in space more efficiently.
The phones enable the robots respectively satellites called SPHERES to add services& that otherwise astronauts would have to provide such as gathering sensor data or capturing video. This is remarkable, because commodity software and hardware are beginning to become building blocks of system architectures formerly comprising only proprietary constituents….
What began more than two decades ago is still in the focus of NASA. In particular, Terry Fong, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Group, is investigating the use of cutting-edge technologies in robots which support men in space. For this reason, the group has equipped the three SPHERES on the ISS with Samsung’s Android-based Nexus S handsets. Each SPHERE satellite comprises functionality for power, propulsion, computing, and navigation. Using an extension port the Android phones have been attached to the SPHERE in order to extend this functionality.
PJ sez: So I guess Apple and Microsoft should probably sue NASA or something. Snort.
vruz: it’ll be cool if they try to issue a search warrant in space.
Well done, Obama administration! I guess James Hansen is a firebagger too? d.i.s.g.r.a.c.e.f.u.l. , s.e.r.v.i.l.e.
—via cwnl:jtotheizzoe:
James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested yesterday as part of the ongoing protests against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
That’s what I call putting your money where your scientific mouth is.
(via Discovery News)
God speed. Leave it to this country to either shut the scientists up or put them in jail in favor of company. I’m surprised not as much people are raging over this.
Reblogged from bethefoodoflove
