Earth

SpaceX Dragon Spies Earth

May 23, 2012

All systems are functioning nominally aboard the Earth orbiting Dragon cargo carrier launched yesterday, May 22, atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX has released the picture above of the Earth as seen by a thermal imager that Dragon will use in its upcoming approach to the International Space Station.

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On The Hunt For High-Altitude Microorganisms

May 20, 2012

The United States Rocket Academy has announced an open call for entries in its High Altitude Astrobiology Challenge, a citizen science project that will attempt to collect samples of microbes that may be lurking in Earth’s atmosphere at the edge of space.

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Watch How Life Recovers from Devastation

May 17, 2012

If a portion of Earth underwent a major cataclysm, how long would it take for life to recover? The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens is giving scientists a an unprecedented opportunity to witness a recovery from devastation, as the eruption leveled the surrounding forest, blasted away hundreds of meters of the mountain’s summit, and [...]

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Stunning Timelapse of Planet Earth from Elektro-L

May 17, 2012

We’ve shared the images and a previous timelapse of Earth’s northern hemisphere, but now here’s a breath-taking timelapse of the entire blue (and green!) marble as seen from Russia’s Elektro-L weather-forecasting satellite, orbiting at a geostationary height of about 36,000 km (22,300 miles). This new video was created by James Drake using some of the [...]

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Is Earth Alive? Scientists Seek Sulfur For An Answer

May 16, 2012

Researchers at the University of Maryland have discovered a way to identify and track sulfuric compounds in Earth’s marine environment, opening a path to either refute or support a decades-old hypothesis that our planet can be compared to a singular, self-regulating, living organism — a.k.a. the Gaia theory.

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The End Of Envisat

May 13, 2012

Well, it’s official. After ten years of groundbreaking observation of our planet, ESA has declared the end of the Envisat mission after losing contact with the satellite on April 8, 2012. All attempts to re-establish communication with Envisat have so far been unsuccessful, and although recovery teams will continue to determine the cause of signal [...]

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From Russia With Love: A Singularly Stunning Image of Earth

May 11, 2012

Unlike most satellite images of Earth, this one was not assembled from multiple swath scans or digitally projected onto a globe model — it’s the full disk of our planet in captured as a single, enormous 121 megapixel image, acquired by Russia’s Elektro-L weather-forecasting satellite.

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Earth Has Less Water Than You Think

May 8, 2012

If you were to take all of the water on Earth — all of the fresh water, sea water, ground water, water vapor and water inside our bodies — take all of it and somehow collect it into a single, giant sphere of liquid, how big do you think it would be? According to the [...]

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The View From Freedom 7

May 5, 2012

51 years ago today, on May 5, 1961, NASA launched the Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket carrying Alan B. Shepard, Jr. aboard the Freedom 7 capsule. Shepard successfully became America’s first man in space, making a brief but historic suborbital test flight that propelled American astronauts into the space race of the 1960s. The video above is [...]

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Will This Be The Fate Of The Earth?

May 3, 2012

Astronomers have found four nearby white dwarf stars surrounded by disks of material that could be the remains of rocky planets much like Earth — and one star in particular appears to be in the act of swallowing up what’s left of an Earthlike planet’s core. The research, announced today by the Royal Astronomical Society, [...]

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View from Orbit of a Huge White Sands Dust Storm

April 30, 2012

It’s clear from this image of why a region in New Mexico, USA is called ‘White Sands.’ The dust plumes in this photograph taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station show a dust storm in the White Sands National Monument. But this is a huge dust storm. The white dust plumes stretch [...]

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Antarctica’s Ice Being Eaten Away From Below

April 25, 2012

Data collected from a NASA ice-watching satellite reveal that the vast ice shelves extending from the shores of western Antarctica are being eaten away from underneath by ocean currents, which have been growing warmer even faster than the air above.

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Magnify the Universe

April 25, 2012

Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth. Looking for a fun way to investigate the Universe? This interactive infographic from Number Sleuth accurately illustrates the scale of over 100 items in the observable Universe ranging from galaxies to insects, nebulae and stars to molecules and atoms. The feature includes some wonderful images, using real [...]

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Ancient Asteroids Kept Pelting Earth in a ‘Late-Late’ Heavy Bombardment

April 25, 2012

Even though the Late Heavy Bombardment is somewhat of a controversial idea, new research has revealed this period of impacts to the Earth-Moon system may have lasted much longer than originally estimated and well into the time when early life was forming on Earth. Additionally, this “late-late” period of impacts — 3.8 billion to 2.5 [...]

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Earthrise, Revisited

April 23, 2012

On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders and Jim Lovell were the first humans to witness an Earthrise as our home planet came up over the lunar horizon. The photos they captured were the first of their kind, instantly inspiring the imaginations of millions and highlighting the beauty and fragility of [...]

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Earth Day Timelapse

April 22, 2012

In honor of Earth Day, enjoy this beautiful timelapse compiled by science educator James Drake, who put together one of the first ISS flyover videos. This video was created from images produced by the Russian geostationary Electro-L Weather Satellite, and the images are some of the largest whole disk images of our planet, as the [...]

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How Big Was Monday’s CME?

April 19, 2012

This big! The M1.7-class flare that erupted from active region 1461 on Monday, April 16 let loose an enormous coronal mass ejection many, many times the size of Earth, making this particular writer very happy that our planet was safely tucked out of aim at the time… and 93 million miles away.

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Is This The Last Image From Envisat?

April 18, 2012

The European Space Agency’s venerable Envisat satellite may have sent back its final image, according to recent news from the Agency.

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Intelligent Alien Dinosaurs?

April 13, 2012

I for one welcome our alien dinosaur overlords…maybe. Dinosaurs once roamed and ruled the Earth. Is it possible that similar humongous creatures may have evolved on another planet – a world that DIDN’T get smacked by an asteroid – and later they developed to have human-like, intelligent brains? A recent paper discussing why the biochemical [...]

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What’s the Moon Made Of? Earth, Most Likely.

April 12, 2012

Recent research on lunar samples has shown that the Moon may be made of more Earth than green cheese — if by “green cheese” you mean the protoplanet impactor that was instrumental in its creation.

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