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 5 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 7 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 6 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

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 11 months 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 4 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 12 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 2 months 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 3 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 5 months 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 4 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 1 year 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 11 months 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 1 week ago

Astronomers from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research have discovered a new cluster of galaxies, hidden behind a previously identified cluster of galaxies. The recently exposed cosmic giant is apparently just as bright as the first group, but is six times further away. The astronomers made the discovery as part of an international team using the space telescope XMM-Newton. picked by AutumnLotus 8 months ago

Astronaut Suni Williams qualified for the Boston Marathon before learning she would be at the international space station on race day. She has been cleared for a 26.2-mile simulated run at 10 a.m. EDT on Monday - just when the real event will be leaving Hopkinton down on Earth. picked by BrownTrout 1 year ago

The solution to the high cost of space travel involves launching a Reliant Robin--a 3-wheeled car with a pointy nose--on a 1/5 scale space shuttle. With predictable results. Take it from me, though, the amateur rocketry technology behind this launch is incredible,and the results are due to the short TV production schedule. (20 minutes, FF to 16:00 if you just want to see the outcome). picked by Fanatic 1 year 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 2 months 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 11 months ago