Famed astronomy blogger Phil Plait has a few sagely words to say to all sci-fi writers and movie directors about what happens when you’re suddenly exposed to the perilous vacuum of space. So what does happen? Does your body suddenly explode? Does your blood boil? Do your eyes pop out?...
A new private space company, Planetary Resources, has announced its intention to begin a long term venture aimed at prospecting and mining asteroids within the next 10 to 20 years. Ordinarily, such a venture would be scoffed at by most experts, but Planetary Resources has been operating in secret for...
Have you ever wondered what the most interesting fact in the universe is? Well, here’s how Neil deGrasse Tyson answers that question. And if you have more time on your hands (1 hour and 18 minutes of time), here’s Stephen Colbert’s interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Very funny, and very...
For the cost of less than a single day on the War on Terror, we could have a robust and far-reaching program to explore Mars, look for signs of life on another planet, increase our overall science knowledge, and inspire a future generation of kids. …so explains Phil Plait, who...
It’s 72 and sunny on Kepler-22b! Well, maybe. The Kepler Telescope team has announced confirmation of a terrestrial planet orbiting a G-class star (same type as our star) in the habitable orbit zone. The planet, dubbed Kepler-22b, is a little over twice the size of Earth, and orbits its host...
The new Mars rover Curiosity has successfully launched and is now well on its way to the Red Planet. The 9 month journey will (hopefully) conclude in a successful landing and an awesome 2 year (plus) mission to explore the Gale Crater for evidence of microbial life. Here’s the launch....
This is a fantastic video produced onboard the International Space Station while orbiting 250 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. The video was put together by NASA Astronaut Ron Garan. It is absolutely stunning in every way. Just click play, make sure HD is on, click the...
This is perhaps the greatest tribute to America’s Space Shuttle program that I have yet seen. An 8 minute video from Nature Videos (of the Nature science journal), it highlights every mission in the 30 year program–it’s good times and bad times, it’s triumphs and it’s tragedies. So turn up...
The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed this morning at 5:56am EDT on July 21, 2011, bringing to a close the halcyon days of Mankind’s exploration of space. Okay, I suppose it is a bit too harsh to say that this end’s the human exploration of space. The point is simply that,...
On July 20th, 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will touch down after a 12 day mission, marking the end of an era. Never again will one of these distinguished spacecraft grace the launch pad of Cape Canaveral, rocket through the sky above the Atlantic, or reach onward to that great...
