(photos By Robdogbird)

Were Troy’s walls not built by Gods? Was Rome not made by two twin half-blood gods? QUESTION: What do they both have in common? ANSWER: They both fell.

the gods like to make things that collapse // L.H.Z (via lhzthepoet)

In a real vector space, such as R, corresponding concept in an caffeine space. [2880x1800] http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

Would You Go to Mars? Meet the Four Women Astronauts Who Can't Wait to Go

Mars. A next step for man? Yes, and a giant leap for womankind.

In first grade Jessica Meir made a drawing of herself standing on the moon. Turns out she underestimated her own ambition: Today, at 38, Meir could become the first human to touch down on an even farther destination: Mars. A next step for man? Yes, and a giant leap for womankind.

The mission itself is at least 15 years away—it will take that long to build and test every last piece of equipment. But it’s already the most hotly anticipated space-exploration effort ever. Governments around the world—in China, Europe, and Russia—have plans in the works to at least land robots on Mars, while in the U.S., private companies like SpaceX are partnering with NASA on a human mission and plotting their own commercial trips. And unlike the 1960s race to the moon, this time women are playing pivotal roles—building rockets, designing space suits, and controlling the remote rovers that are already sending momentous insights back from Mars.

A human landing will not, to put it mildly, be easy. The shortest route to our planetary neighbor is 35 million miles. Just getting there will take six to nine months; a round-trip, two to three years. “This will be the longest, farthest, and most ambitious space-­exploration mission in history,” says Dava Newman, Ph.D., NASA’s deputy administrator. Once they’ve landed, the astronauts will have to navigate giant dust storms, temperatures that can plummet to minus 284 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, and an atmosphere filled with cancer-causing galactic radiation. If their equipment fails? NASA won’t hear an SOS for 10 minutes. And there’s no turning back. “It’s not like the moon; that’s a three-day trip,” says Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems at the agency. “When you go to Mars, you’re going. You can’t abort.”

And yet the pull is irresistible: The rovers have revealed a land of swooping red dunes and craters. Evidence of water—not just ice, but actual flowing water—has surfaced, and water is often considered a sign of possible life. “Mars can teach us so much about the past, present, and future of our own planet,” says Meir. “That’s a phenomenal thing.”

Also phenomenal? For the first time NASA’s latest class of astronauts is 50 percent female. A fearless group, Meir and her colleagues Anne McClain, 36, Christina Hammock Koch, 37, and Nicole Aunapu Mann, 38, have already flown combat missions in Iraq, braved the South Pole, and dived under thick layers of ice in Antarctica. Last fall they gave Glamour exclusive access to watch them train at NASA’s facilities in Houston—and talked about their epic adventure.

Continue Reading.

Rick Guidice

There Will Be A Supernova In The Sky In 2016

A supernova will appear in the sky in the first few months of 2016, according to astronomers working on the Hubble Space Telescope. The prediction is possible because they first saw the star explode in 2014 in a gravitationally lensed galaxy, which will make it visible again next year.

Gravitational lenses happen when a massive object (or objects such as a cluster of galaxies) magnifies and distorts the light of background galaxies. In this case, the galaxy cluster is so massive that it deforms space and time so that it acts like a gigantic magnifying glass.

Sometimes, these distortions produce multiple images of the same object. Although they belong to the same galaxy, the images we see were not emitted at the same time. Because light travels at a finite speed, photons will take a different amount of time to travel around the massive object depending on the path they follow – with some routes taking longer than others.

The supernova explosion that we will see in 2016 is a re-run of the 2014 one, known as the Refsdal Supernova. It was generated in a galaxy nine billion light-years away, and the lens is created by a massive galaxy cluster, called MACS J1149+2223, five billion light-years from us.

Read more ~ IFL Science

Image: This image shows the appearance of the Refsdal Supernova. The middle circle shows the predicted position of the reappearing supernova in early 2016.    Credit: NASA/ESA/HST  

Solar System: Top 5 Things to Know This Week

It’s only Tuesday and this week is already filled with news about our solar system. Here are the top five things to know this week:

1) Mars!

With five spacecraft in orbit and two rovers exploring the ground, there’s always something new and interesting about the Red Planet. Yesterday things got even more exciting when we released the most compelling evidence yet that liquid water sometimes flows on Mars today.

2) HTV-5 Cargo Ship

On Monday, the HTV-5 cargo ship was released from the International Space Station to burn up as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. The HTV-5 carried a variety of experiments and supplies to the space station, and was docked for five weeks.

3) Pluto Continues to Excite

If you haven’t been keeping up with the weekly releases of newly downloaded pictures from our New Horizons spacecraft, you are definitely missing out. But don’t worry, we have you covered. The latest updates can be found HERE, be sure to follow along as new information is released. More images are scheduled to be featured on Oct. 1.

4) Cassini Mission

This week on Sept. 30, our Cassini spacecraft will reach the closest point to Saturn in it’s latest orbit around the planet. Just to put things in perspective, that will be Cassini’s 222nd orbit around Saturn! Learn more about this mission HERE.

5) What Happened to Mars’ Atmosphere?

Believe it or not, the Martian atmosphere we see today used to be much more substantial many years ago. What happened? Our Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars for one Earth year, searching for the answers. Learn more HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space:http://nasa.tumblr.com

his voice sounds so animated and he’s so cute i want to hug him for a long time

Sci Fi Concept Art by Huang Frank

NASA just released thousands of high-res Apollo mission photos

The space research agency’s Project Apollo Archive made a massive update to its Flickr account Sunday, adding a trove of more than 8,000 photos taken during Moon missions from 1969 to 1972.

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