On April 12, 1961, the Soviets launched a 27-year-old fighter pilot named Yuri Gagarin on the world's first piloted space mission. picked by suebe 1 year ago

...its two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will be carrying paying customers aloft within two years. picked by topofall 7 months ago

A Japanese astronaut plans to throw a boomerang inside a space station to test whether it can fly in zero gravity. picked by AutumnLotus 9 months ago

Takao Doi, the Japanese astronaut who'll be testing whether a boomerang will fly in space , now has something else to live down: he'll be the living test-bed for a new underwear fabric said to provide "high levels of deodorant, antiseptic and antistatic effect" in space. picked by Mitzuzake 8 months ago

NASA discovered that space shuttle Atlantis has been holed by a tiny piece of space debris. The 1/10-inch hole represents the second largest debris damage event ever identified. Fortunately, it missed everything that was important to the mission. Space debris is an increasingly challenging problem. picked by Fanatic 2 years ago

Remember the astronaut who recently tested whether boomerangs return to their throwers in the absence of gravity? Well, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has released video of astronaut Takao Doi showing that the objects do, in fact, come back - even in the microgravity environment of the space station. picked by AutumnLotus 5 months ago

With the picture-perfect launch of the pioneering SELENE lunar exploration probe from a Mitsubishi H-IIA rocket, Japan has made a stunning return to space while answering China's bold challenge. Includes one of the coolest launch videos you'll ever see. picked by mitzuzake 1 year ago

How cool would it be to have your name on board the spacecraft that discovers the first known Earth-like planet beyond our solar system? Well, here's your chance. NASA today announced an opportunity for anyone to submit their name to be included on a DVD and rocketed into space as part of NASA's Kepler Mission, scheduled to launch in February 2009 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. picked by AutumnLotus 5 months ago

No spaceship. No space suit. Just you versus the cold, empty vacuum of space. Find out about how long you could survive. picked by Bornbad 3 months ago

Geomorphology from Space is an out of print 1986 NASA publication edited by Nicholas M. Short, Sr. and Robert W. Blair, Jr. designed for use by the remote sensing science and educational communities to study landforms and landscapes. It has a gallery of space images consisting of 237 plates, each showing a different geographic region where a particular landform theme is exemplified. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

NASA scientists have found a way to make giant space telescopes out of moondust. They unveiled plans today to mix lunar soil with a chemical hardener to make a light-collecting mirror more than 50 metres wide. picked by maxriter 4 months ago

An unusual electrical disturbance has been spotted in space, travelling unchanged through the ionised gas surrounding Earth. A European space mission called Cluster detected a "soliton" wave, a phenomenon similar to the self-contained solitons that can travel along optical fibres and channels of water on Earth. This is the first known soliton in space. picked by AutumnLotus 7 months ago

Malaysian religious authorities are hopeful that the country's first astronaut will also become the first Muslim to fast in space when he blasts off next month during Ramadan. picked by 2manyusernames 1 year ago

Students from OSU's Radiation Physics Laboratory built and successfully launched a cosmic radiation detector this summer that, carried by a helium-filled balloon, reached 104,000 feet in altitude. The detector recorded radiation levels at the varying altitudes -- information that will be used by NASA to develop instrumentation for space flight. picked by Dork 2 months ago

A private space company's second shot at flying its low-cost rocket into orbit was an apparent partial success tonight. Space Exploration Technologies' two-stage Falcon 1 rocket launched from a remote seven-acre island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The first stage worked well; the second stage apparently entered an oscillation and telemetry has been lost. picked by Fanatic 2 years ago

The idea behind a space elevator is simple. Deploy a cable stretching from the ground near Earth’s equator far enough into space, and centrifugal forces due to Earth’s spin will keep the cable taut.

*fixed picked by jLoSsDh 4 months ago

NASA scientists have poured cold water on the theory that a plane en route to New Zealand narrowly avoided a collision with flaming Russian space junk. picked by Bornbad 2 years ago

Blue Origin, another competitor in the burgeoning private access to space market, has released news(with video) of a successful test flight 11 November. The company is backed by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. picked by Fanatic 2 years ago

Oct 4th will be Sputnik's 50th anniversary. Although it had its scary connotations, the dawn of the Space Age was also a hopeful event. Visionaries celebrated humanity’s long-awaited climb out of its cradle, and pragmatists soon savored the benefits of communications and weather satellites. The evolution of the space program continues to be dramatic. In a decade or so, it will be hard... read full post picked by 2manyusernames 1 year ago

Catching a free ride to Mars takes more than sticking out a thumb, but some hardy Earth bacteria could survive as hitchhikers clinging to the outside of spacecraft, studies have shown. Now a set of experiments going up with space shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station will test how exposure to the harshness of space might change bacteria during a simulated Mars mission. picked by AutumnLotus 10 months ago