Space Rules

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Everything you want to know about the Apollo Guidance Computer

[lightthiscandle]

Happy birthday, Alan Shepard.

[zechery-deactivated20220114]

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

No guys you don’t understand.

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing

[patrickthomson]

the most optimistic letter that any human has ever written

[clickholeofficial]

Come on people. The time is now. Reblog to send this kid to space camp. #SendHimToSpaceCamp

[haveitjoeway2-deactivated201608]

good luck at space camp mother fucker

[thecurioustask-blog]

[spaceagebohemia]

[humanoidhistory]

TODAY IN HISTORY – On July 20, 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars, becoming the first space probe ever to land on the Red Planet (first human-sent probe, that is!). That very day, Viking 1 transmitted the black-and-white image seen above. The next day the first color image (above) of the surface was taken.

(NASA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

[tastefullyoffensive]

[generalelectric]

The Lunar Landing Training Vehicle, and its predecessor, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, were developed by NASA in the early 1960s to prepare astronauts for the first mission to the moon. Built by Bell Aerosystems, the vehicles featured a GE CF-700-2V jet engine that pointed downward to cancel out 5/6th of the vehicle’s weight. Two 2250 Newton hydrogen peroxide lift rockets were also used to help simulate lunar conditions.

Three out of the five that were created crashed during training, with all of the astronauts, including Neil Armstrong in the first crash, ejecting safely. According to Armstrong, the Lunar Module flew better than the test vehicles, but the test vehicles were vital to the success of the moon landing. In his own words, “What the LLTV gave you was not so much the seat-of-the-pants dynamics as the real-world visual. That and the fact that, if you make a mistake, you can’t hit the reset button.”

Read more about the vehicles here. GIFs from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center / YouTube. 

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Space Rules turned 6 today!

[sci-universe]

Estonia has now signed the accession agreement to become the 21st member of European Space Agency (ESA)! The coolest thing was to see astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti's image greeting us with my country’s flag in space (ISS) just now.

Estonia has a long tradition in astrophysics research and has contributed to several ESA scientific and technology projects. Our first satellite, ESTCube-1, a technology demonstrator designed as part of the Estonian Student Satellite Programme (where I was on internship), was launched by Vega rocket on 7 May 2013.

[chuckhistory]

We must colonize the moon.  

[badndngirl]

Famous NDNs

John Herrington (1958- )

United States Naval Aviator (retired), former astronaut

First enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space.

Winner of several service awards, including the Navy Commendation Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.

Chickasaw Nation

[1950sunlimited]

The Sputnikburger, 1957

In November of 1957, an Atlanta restaurant tried to cash in on America’s fascination with the Russian satellite, Sputnik. Their "Sputnikburger" was garnished with Russian Dressing and Caviar… a large “Satellite Olive" was peirced with three toothpicks for "antennae." from: The Century, a Chronicle of the Twentieth Century

[imperialgoogie]

This from the most paranoid of anti-Communist countries.

[explore-blog]

The fine folks of NASA’s JPL have made some utterly delightful exoplanet travel posters inspired by vintage posters from the golden age of travel.