Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
An interesting model of our solar system’s path as it travels through space in the Milky Way.
Certainly a departure from usual models that show the Sun as a static object, which it certainly isn’t
An update on Soyuz TMA-09M. The crew of Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano arrived at Baikonur and have been through their first and second fit checks in the Soyuz. The press was also allowed in for a day and watched the crew exercise, relax and plant their traditional trees. They launch on May 28.
Image credit: NASA, W. Sparks (STScI) and R. Sahai (JPL)
This is a cool website that lets you calculate your age had you lived on any of the other planets in the Solar System. It not only gives your age in days and years but also tells you when you can celebrate your next birthday if, say, you lived on Mars.
MAY THE BRICKS BE WITH YOU A scale model of an X-Wing fighter, made from more than five million Lego bricks, went on display in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday. It’s 11 feet tall, 43 feet long and 44 feet wide, it’s the largest Lego model ever built. Coming soon: a life-size Lego Jar Jar Binks to ruin everything. (Photo: Emmanuel Dunand / AFP-Getty via The Telegraph)
The Engine Burns BlueThis image shows a cutting-edge solar-electric propulsion thruster in development at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., that uses xenon ions for propulsion. An earlier version of this solar-electric propulsion engine has been flying on NASA’s Dawn mission to the asteroid belt.
This engine is being considered as part of the Asteroid Initiative, a proposal to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it. This image was taken through a porthole in a vacuum chamber at JPL where the ion engine is being tested.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechI spend half my time at work on ion propulsion so I’m into this NASA image of the day.
Check out my new shower curtain.
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED
I WILL SEE THIS EVERY SHOWER
You guys, I am thrilled to finally share this with you. It’s the first time I’ve ever curated a show, and it’s a theme that I’m very passionate about. Take a gander at the artist list, get yourself pumped up and come to the show, it’s going to be a stellar time.
I’m going. For sure.
Planet OF Vampires #1, February 1975, cover by Pat Broderick and Neal Adams
Europa Report TRAILER (2013)
Helios-A and Helios-B (also known as Helios 1 and Helios 2), are a pair of probes launched into heliocentric orbit for the purpose of studying solar processes. A joint venture of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and NASA, the probes were launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 10, 1974, and Jan. 15, 1976, respectively.
The probes are notable for having set a maximum speed record among spacecraft at 252,792 km/h (157,078 mi/h or 43.63 mi/s or 70.22 km/s or 0.000234c). Helios 2 flew three million kilometers closer to the Sun than Helios 1, achieving perihelion on 17 April 1976 at a record distance of 0.29 AU (or 43.432 million kilometers), slightly inside the orbit of Mercury. Helios 2 was sent into orbit 13 months after the launch of Helios 1. The Helios space probes completed their primary missions by the early 1980s, but they continued to send data up to 1985. The probes are no longer functional but still remain in their elliptical orbit around the Sun
