Tea said ...


"Super-Earth’s Probable Water Atmosphere Revealed In Blue Light"

@ Corr - Thats epic! when we get there we will find a planet full of Squid people!haha.

think of the fun japan will have with that one...

Voyager 1 Reaches Interstellar Space, a Milestone for Human Exploration

More than 11.6 billion miles away from Earth, NASA's Voyager 1 has finally reached interstellar space, scientists confirmed Thursday.

"It's clearly a major milestone in the history of exploration — there's no doubt about that," Edward Stone, Voyager 1 project scientist, told Mashable Tuesday. "This is sort of like the first circumnavigation of the globe or the first footprints on the moon."

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First Cloud Map of a Planet Beyond Our Solar System:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130930210823.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/saturn20131017.html#.UmDMrNJmzIU




High Above Saturn

This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. It was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. This image has not been geometrically corrected for shifts in the spacecraft perspective and still has some camera artifacts.The mosaic was created from 12 image footprints with red, blue and green filters from Cassini's imaging science subsystem. Ugarkovic used full color sets for 11 of the footprints and red and blue images for one footprint.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Damn Saturn is so so SO beatuiful

Went and downloaded the high res of that picture.. new desktop background

pretttyyy....

putting this here because its about our planet...

Published on 29 Oct 2013

Video courtesy European Space Agency.

From the highest volcano to the deepest canyon, from impact craters to ancient river beds and lava flows, this showcase of images from ESA's Mars Express takes you on an unforgettable journey across the Red Planet.

Mars Express was launched on 2 June 2003 and arrived at Mars six-and-a-half months later. It has since orbited the planet nearly 12 500 times, providing scientists with unprecedented images and data collected by its suite of scientific instruments.

The data have been used to create an almost global digital topographic model of the surface, providing a unique visualisation and enabling researchers to acquire new and surprising information about the evolution of the Red Planet.

The images in this movie were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera and the video was released by the DLR German Aerospace Center as part of the ten years of Mars Express celebrations in June 2013. The music has been created by Stephan Elgner of DLR's Mars Express planetary cartography team. DLR developed and is operating the stereo camera.

Comet Ison: moment of truth for the 'comet of the century'

Astronomers are counting down the hours to see if the Comet Ison survives its closest encounter with the Sun.

It has been hurtling from the edge of the solar system for five and a half million years, but tonight it could all be over for Comet Ison.

At approximately 6.35pm it will “graze” the sun and astronomers are waiting with baited breath to see if it survives the furnace like conditions.

There are three possibilities for the lump of rock and ice which has been dubbed the “comet of the century” – it could be vaporised, be ripped apart, or could survive the brush, known as its perihelion, largely intact.

If it remains intact, stargazers could experience a once in lifetime galactic firework display, beginning this weekend and visible around sunrise and sunset.

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This movie from the spacecraft's Heliospheric Imager shows Comet ISON, Mercury, Comet Encke andEarth over a five-day period from Nov. 20 to Nov. 25, 2013. The sun sits right of the field of view of this camera. Credit: NASA/STEREO

For all you Whovians...

International Astronomical Union : To rename the newly discovered planet "HD 106906 b" to Gallifrey! In honour of Doctor Who and its 50 years! even if it's just a second name or officially recognised as "also known as Gallifrey" #GallifreyFound

Link

@Cor yeah I saw that on FB! I agree completely! You know, since the real Gallifrey is stuck in a time lock and all that ... *Whovian mode: ACTIVATE!*

Mars One Update:

On the 31st of December Mars One announced that 1058 out of over 200,000 applicants were selected as candidates to proceed to round 2 of the selection process. Interviews with candidates were covered by many major media publications around the world. A selection of such interviews and other Mars One coverage can be found below.
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Underground ocean makes Saturn moon top bet for alien life.

Scientists have determined that a hidden ocean of liquid water likely lies beneath the frozen crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Because the tiny moon freely sends samples of this water into space via spectacular geysers, the finding could rocket Enceladus to the forefront of searches for life beyond our planet.

Enceladus has been known as an oddball in the outer solar system ever since the discovery in 2005 of its incredible water jets. The finding, made by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft, revealed that the tiny world -- only one-seventh the size of our own moon -- is geologically active. Cassini has been back to Enceladus many times since, exploring and photographing enormous cracks at the moon's south pole known as tiger stripes, and even flying through the geysers to sample their composition.

Scientists knew the water in Enceladus' jets must have been coming from somewhere. But exactly how much liquid water the moon kept on hand at any given time was something of a mystery. Perhaps subterranean ice blocks were rubbing together, generating friction and heat that melted the ice and powered the geysers. The idea of an ocean has long been a more attractive explanation and, in this sense, the recent finding wasn't unanticipated.

"I was not surprised because we knew there was liquid water," said aerospace engineer Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome, lead author of a paper appearing today in Science on the finding. "But quantifying the amount of water was a different story. It could have been rather shallow or a remarkable mass, like the one we have found."

More found Source

Space surgery robot will enter astronauts via the belly button

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/belly-button-surgery-bot-space

Light on Mars? Mystery flash seen on Red Planet.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10752760/Light-on-Mars-Mystery-flash-seen-on-Red-Planet.html

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/06/01/spacexs-new-spacecraft-can-take-people-to-the-iss-and-back

The reusability factor is a big deal, says Musk. "As long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space," he explains. "It will always be incredibly expensive."

I agree with this so much!