Category Archives: Space

The awesome beauty of the Z Machine

Posted on 08/14/2012 by Zed

Sandia National Laboratory’s Z Machine is the world’s largest X Ray generator. (Click on photo to see a much larger image.) Sandia National Lab’s Z Machine is used by professor Don Winget to study properties of white dwarf stars. The … Continue reading →

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Curiosity camera project manager explains the 2MP Mastcam

Posted on 08/10/2012 by Zed

The 2MP Mastcam from Curiosity rover was developed by Mike Ravine and his team at Malin Space Science Systems. The camera has a 34mm lens, which is equivalent to a 115 mm lens for a 35 mm camera. Photography nerds … Continue reading →

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The computer specs of Curiosity

Posted on 08/07/2012 by Zed

Late Sunday night, NASA’s Curiosity rover made it safely to Mars. Sebastian Anthony has a fascinating article for ExtremeTech, titled “Inside NASA’s Curiosity: It’s an Apple Airport Extreme… with wheels” which details the humble computing tech spes of this magnificent … Continue reading →

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The “mystery” of Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft (solved)

Posted on 07/23/2012 by Zed

NASA has finally explained the “mysterious” slowdown of Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts. Pioneers 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973, and are now both about 10 billion away from planet earth. In 1988, JPL scientists noted that … Continue reading →

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NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror (An overly dramatic video)

Posted on 07/10/2012 by Zed

Here is a video where Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) scientists reflect on the landing of Curiosity Mars Rover that is coming up on August 6th, 2012. NYTimes has a story about how this video has become a huge hit for … Continue reading →

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Tomorrow: Space shuttle Enterprise to fly above New York City

Posted on 04/26/2012 by Zed

Ok, so the above is a not-so-good fake collage I made for this post. (Space Shuttle photo by NASA. Statue of Liberty photo used under Flickr CCLi. Photo by Flickr user aa7ae. Tomorrow (Friday, April 27th, 2012) you can see … Continue reading →

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Space shuttle Discovery to fly over Washington area April 17

Posted on 04/16/2012 by Zed

If you live in the Washington, D.C. metro area, I would not miss this event for anything! NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) with space shuttle Discovery mounted atop will fly approximately 1,500 feet above various parts of the Washington, … Continue reading →

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Hottest spot on earth

Posted on 04/16/2012 by Zed

Iran’s Lut desert was the hottest spot on earth in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. Image: NASA. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the highest temperature ever measured on Earth was on September 13, 1922, when the thermometer at … Continue reading →

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Jeff Bezos’ plan to recover Apollo 11 engines from ocean floor

Posted on 03/30/2012 by Zed

Apollo 11′s F1 Engines. Photo: NASA. I wonder what the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos does in his spare time? Last year, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, with a team of experts, set out to locate the F-1 rocket engines … Continue reading →

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200,000 galaxies in a single photo!

Posted on 03/27/2012 by Zed

The above photo is a 55-hr exposure from the VISTA telescope in Chile. And even though there are many stars in the picture–mostly the blue dots, there are over 200,000 galaxies in it! What’s insane is that this picture is just … Continue reading →

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