. . . just links from HayYoo.com and DanKostecki.com
That thermal protection system took 10 years to develop. It’s got two layers of carbon-fiber-reinforced carbon, which retains its structural properties in high heat. In between those layers is carbon foam, a material that’s mostly air and thus doesn’t transfer much heat. On top of that is an outer layer of aluminum oxide, a white material that reflects light.
The first human set foot on the moon 49 years ago on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong emerged from the Apollo 11 lander. Along with the footage that was broadcast live on television, iconic images of the lunar expedition come from still photos the astronauts took themselves on a Hasselblad camera. The photos provide exceedingly crisp depictions of the lunar surface, the astronauts’ equipment and candid shots of the explorers themselves.
Included as well are less meticulously composed, almost accidental-looking images taken by the astronauts over the course of their mission.
Famed astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered the first four moons of Jupiter way back in the early 1600s. More than 400 years later, astronomers are still finding moons orbiting the solar system’s largest planet. We’re not just talking about one or two stragglers, either. Astronomers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have spotted 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total to 79.
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was one for the ages, providing an unprecedented look at this oddly shaped celestial object. The Rosetta probe captured nearly 100,000 images over the course of its mission, all of which are now freely available to the public in a single Rosetta archive.
NASA has confirmed its upcoming Mars 2020 rover will carry a small robotic passenger. The agency has been working on a helicopter drone for use on Mars, and it now plans to include this vehicle with the 2020 rover. The still-unnamed Mars helicopter will be the first heavier-than-air craft to fly on another planet. In doing so, it will help the 2020 rover mission cover more ground and learn more about Mars.
As temperatures outside dipped to well below freezing, and as blizzards pounded the Antarctic research station, German scientists were carefully tending to a remarkable veggie garden—one requiring no soil or natural sunlight. The success of their first harvest, which produced vibrant-looking lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, and other treats, represents a promising test run for similar greenhouses that could one day be built on Mars—or beyond.
The previous record holder for the farthest picture was NASA’s Voyager 1. The probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn before heading out to interstellar space, captured a distant picture of Earth on February 14th, 1990, when Voyager 1 was 3.75 billion miles away. Known as the “Pale Blue Dot,” it was the last picture Voyager 1 took before its cameras were turned off shortly afterward.
Voyager 1’s record remained unbroken for 27 years until December 5th, 2017, when New Horizons snapped its photo of the cluster at a distance of 3.79 billion miles from Earth. Then, the spacecraft broke its own record again two hours later, when it took photos of two objects in the Kuiper Belt, the large cloud of icy objects at the edge of the Solar System that New Horizons is currently traversing.
Image by NASA , via Wikimedia Commons
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