Space

Best meteor shower of 2007

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Mark your calendar… the Geminid meteor shower, the best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th. For more information see the Science@NASA article Asteroid Shower. ceo

NASA’s new cool website presence

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NASA’s new redesigned website breaks off the traditional, old fashion (government looking) look and feel, with support for new AJAX’ish flashy behavior, a new MySpace tab, and cool graphics. Check it out. ceo

Watching the Earth-rise and set over the Moon

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Wow, so gorgeous, check it out… Japan’s space agency (JAXA) has released two high definition videos of Earth-rise and Earth-set, as witnessed by its lunar explorer SELENE, which is now orbiting our largest natural satellite. See the videos (note, downloading is slow): “Earth-rise” Images taken by the HD camera of the KAGUYA (no audio) “Earth-set” … Read more

The New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission

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I’m not sure that many folks know about the New Horizons probe, which is in route to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt, in the outer solar system (this is beyond the orbit of planet Neptune). The New Horizons spacecraft was launched in January of 2006, got a gravity assist with a fly-by of Jupiter early this year … Read more

Google Lunar X Prize

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Google is funding the Lunar X Prize with $30 million, to encourage private teams to go to the moon, with $20 million to the first private enterprise to put a robot on the moon. Very nice Google! I love the space program, and this kind of announcements makes me want to go back to it… … Read more

Total Lunar Eclipse – August 28th

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The moon was redish this morning… I saw it! Did you? Space.com has an article on this morning’s full lunar eclipse – it has been a while since I see one, and it was the first one for my daughter… See NASA’s page for today’s total lunar eclipse. ceo

We have liftoff – Teacher in Space

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I missed the launch of STS-118 yesterday due to business travel… But it is great to see the successful and historical launch of the STS-118 Space Shuttle Endeavour. We have liftoff! of the Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-118… The Vehicle Orbiter: OV-105 Endeavour at Launch Pad 39A. The Crew From the left are mission specialists Richard … Read more

Galaxy Zoo – take part in a census of one million galaxies

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What a cool project… Galaxy Zoo leverages the human collective intelligence to help classify thousands of images taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: “Astronomers are inviting members of the public to help them make major new discoveries by taking part in a census of one million galaxies.” It is the same concept introduced by … Read more