Waste in Space is a Waste of Space

There are a lot of hard calculations, math, and science involved in trying to get men to the moon.  Believe or not, one critical concern is - how the hell will astronauts use the bathroom? There's a contraption that allows urine to be ejected out of a small hole on the spacecraft, but even that requires additional calculations. Within the vacuum of space there is very little matter, so even a small amount of force exerted by ... liquid ... exiting a spacecraft can shift its spacecraft

For more info, check the video below by MinutePhysics. If you can't see it, click here.

Happy New Year From Spaaaaaaace!

From NASA's Google+ page: 

Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn of the International Space Station's Expedition 34 crew send down their best wishes for a happy new year

The Nile As Seen From Space

From NASA's Google+ page:

The Nile glows bright at night in this sparkling image from our Suomi NPP satellite

The city lights resemble a giant calla lily, just one with a kink in its stem near the city of Luxor. Some of the brightest lights occur around Cairo, but lights are abundant along the length of the river. Bright city lights also occur along the Suez Canal and around Tel Aviv.

Away from the lights, however, land and water appear uniformly black. This image was acquired near the time of the new Moon, and little moonlight was available to brighten land and water surfaces.

More of NASA's Year of Awesome: Goddard Flight Center

The photo of the "Mickey Mouse" crater on Mercury. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

I previously posted an NASA infographic celebrating its 2012 accomplishments.  The NASA Goddard Flight Center decided that that wasn't enough, and they've posted their own collection of photos and videos. Unfortunately they can't be embedded as a set, but a link to the Flickr album can be found by clicking here.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Goddard Center in Greenbelt, MD this year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Landsat system.  My coverage can be found here.  

NASA's Year of Awesome

2012 was an amazing year for space exploration. NASA has put together a great interactive infographic showing all of their accomplishments from the Mars Curiosity Rover to the GRAIL moon exploration. To check it out, click here!

Also, check out an amazing video of how the Hubble Telescope. Jannik Hansen from Google+ puts its best:

Imagine taking a picture of an empty area of space no bigger to you than a grain of sand held out at arms' length. Through enough exposure, however, Hubble revealed that this miniscule are of space holds a multitude of galaxies never seen before. 

If you can't see the video below, click here.