Tag: NASA

Future Travel Plans

There was a time when travel was sleek and sophisticated (and inaccessible). Frank Sinatra sang about flying. I remember finding an old PanAm in-flight service menu my grandfather ha kept in his attic. There was real food that you might actually want to eat. The newest installments in the NASA/JPL Visions of the Future poster series invite us to imagine travel across our solar system and the galaxy with nostalgia for the optimism of mid-20th Century travel and hope that the future of space exploration is sexier than The Martian.

It is not polite to talk about one’s “Chaos Regions” in public

You can argue that Pluto is not really a planet (really, at this point, why would you?), but the New Horizons probe has categorically dismissed any notion that Pluto and its associated moons are boring. Pluto has a “Chaos Region”. Boring things do not have “Chaos Regions”.

Chaos-Region-9-10-15

HT: Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing.

There is No Dark Side

dscovrepicmoontransitfullAccording to NASA, this shot of the far side of the Moon was captured by the Deep Space Climate Observer Satellite as it orbited a million miles above Earth. The “dark side” of the Moon is only figuratively “dark”.

I also feel like the realization that the “dark side” of the Moon has become progressively less mysterious since humanity’s first imaging of it in 1959 kind of ruins the conceit of isolation in Moon for me.

HT: David Grinspoon

And on your right is the planet Pluto…

According to NASA, the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach (about 7800 miles) to Pluto right now (7:49AM ET, 14 July 2015) after traveling three billion miles. If you want a travel post, that certainly fits the bill.

The Woman Who Saved the US Space Program

Part of the Reactions series from the American Chemical Society, featuring Raychelle Burks.

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