planets

Showing 30 posts tagged planets

Further Up Yonder: A Message From ISS To All Humankind by film student Giacomo Sardelli, using images and audio messages courtesy of NASA. The video’s transcript: 

As the most forward deployed citizens of the planet at this moment, and the first expedition crew aboard Space Station Alpha, we are well started on our journey of exploration and discovery, building a foothold for men and women who will voyage and live in places far away from our home planet. We are opening a gateway to space for all humankind.

As we orbit the planet every 90 minutes, we see a world without borders and send our wish that all nations will work towards peace and harmony. Our world has changed dramatically, still the ISS is the physical proof that nations can work together in harmony and should promote peace and global cooperation, and rich goals that are simply out of this world.

On this night, we would like to share with all, our good fortune on this space adventure, our wonder and excitement as we gaze on the Earth’s splendor, and our strong sense that the human spirit to do, to explore, to discover has no limit. 

Times are hard all over the world, but this is a time when we can all think about being together and treasuring our planet, and we have a pretty nice view of it up here.

via @ReidGower.

Want to see what it looked like for Curiosity as it hurtled toward the surface of Mars? After the heat shield separates, the car-sized rover, still protected by its back shell, continued to fall quickly toward Mars by parachute, until it separated from the back shell and began its powered descent and touchdown (via sky crane) to the ground.

Using footage provided by NASA, Reddit user Godd2 just spent the last four days on behalf of all humankind creating a stunning interpolated HD version of the descent. In layman’s terms interpolation involves taking a choppy video, in this case NASA’s 4 frames-per-second video, and rendering the “missing” frames in between resulting in an incredibly smooth 25 frames-per-second video. 

Compared to the more suspenseful Seven Minutes of Terror video, this one is rather majestic, and inspires awe in a completely different way.

From the archives, all things Mars Curiosity.

via This Is Colossal.

Curiosity Has Landed, the 2m24s definitive edit from NASA Television: 

Get a behind the scenes look a the tension, anticipation and exhilaration experienced by scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. during the Curiosity rover’s harrowing descent through the Martian atmosphere — known as “Seven Minutes of Terror.” News of Curiosity’s safe touchdown following the 13-thousand-to-zero-mile-an-hour descent to the Red Planet’s surface brought elation and high-fives all around. Curiosity begins a two-year investigation of whether Mars is or ever was capable of supporting microbial life.