discoverynews:

Space Station Crew Prepare for Emergency Spacewalk

After the discovery of a leak of ammonia coolant supplying one of the International Space Station solar arrays on Thursday, NASA managers have decided to plan for an unscheduled spacewalk on Saturday to repair the problem. The final decision about whether to go ahead with the extravehicular activity will be made late on Friday. Read more.

NASA has also released a video showing the ammonia flakes drifting into space.

n-a-s-a:

Saturn Hurricane

Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

spaceporndaily:

applepiesfromscratch:

Cost of the Mars Curiosity Rover - $800 million

Cost of a team to operate the Mars Rover - $1 billion

Total Cost of the Mars Science Laboratory mission - $2.5 billion

Accidentally drawing a penis on the surface of another planet - Priceless

*questions why part of the photo was cut out*

this image was most likely stitched together from several shots, forming a composite, due to this fact, the camera was not able to pan the entire way down onto that part of the shot

(Source: carl-sagan)

cervvselaphvs:

April 12, 1981 NASA space shuttle Columbia touches down at Rogers dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base after orbiting the Earth 37 times in 54.5 hours. This was the first orbital flight by NASA’s space shuttle program of which the shuttle was crewed by Robert Crippen and John Young.

explore-blog:

NASA gets geekily creative with pop-culture-inspired expedition posters.

(Source: )

spaceplasma:

Hidden deep in Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget is this item: “Begins work on a mission to rendezvous with—and then move—a small asteroid.”

See what else you can find that’s particularly noteworthy, and tell us.

futurist-foresight:

Our daily Shuttle magnificence! (Tilted 90 degrees)

space-pics:

STS-99 rotated 90º
http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

We Are The Explorers UPDATE: funding at 50%!

As you might know, NASA cannot advertise itself. This is due to a federal restriction that the government places on itself as a whole. It can reach out publicly to explain what it does for the public, but the advertising landscape for a federal agency is complex. So, as a result NASA cannot advertise itself in a traditional, commercial sense. 

The AIA (Aerospace Industries Association) is so stoked about what NASA does, that they have decided to advertise on behalf of NASA. AND, they’ve decided to crowdsource this effort with Indiegogo.com. ANNNDDD they are planning on showing the ad with the new Star Trek Into Darkness movie that is coming out this year!

This comes at a crucial time when NASA’s own public outreach is threatened due to the Sequestion fight in Washington DC. 

Indiegogo Link: http://igg.me/at/adspace/cstw

So, as it stands, the effort is a little bit over 50% funded. PLEASE spread the word about this and donate to this effort, because the more eyes that see this ad, the more potential supporters NASA will have in the coming months.

(Source: pennyfournasa)

spaceplasma:

Light echo from V838 Monocerotis

This sequence of pictures from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys dramatically demonstrates the echoing of light through space caused by an unusual stellar outburst in January 2002. A burst of light from the bizarre star is spreading into space and reflecting off of surrounding shells of dust to reveal a spectacular, multicoloured bull’s eye.

The sequence of pictures from May to December 2002 shows apparent changes in the appearance of the circumstellar dust as different parts are illuminated sequentially. This effect is called a ‘light echo’. From the first to last image the apparent diameter of the nebula appears to balloon from 4 to 7 light-years. This creates the illusion that the dust is expanding into space faster than the speed of light. In reality the dust shells are not expanding at all, but it is simply the light from the stellar flash that is sweeping out into the nebula. The different colours in the nebula reflect changes in the colour of the star during its outburst.

The red star at the centre of the eyeball-like feature is an unusual erupting supergiant called V838 Monocerotis, located about 20 000 light-years away in the winter constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn). During its outburst the star brightened to more than 600 000 times our Sun’s luminosity.
The circular feature has now expanded to slightly larger than the angular size of Jupiter on the sky. It will continue expanding for several years as reflected light arrives from more distant portions of the nebula. Eventually, once light from behind the nebula begins to arrive, the light echo will create the illusion of contraction, and the echo will disappear by about 2010. The black gaps around the red star are regions of space in which there are holes in the dust. This shows the nebula has a Swiss-cheese structure.

Credit: ESA

larameeee:

flightglobal l Apollo Command Module