thenewenlightenmentage:

Charted: Extraterrestrial Driving Records

NASA has just released this cute chart depicting the various distances traveled by wheeled machines on other worlds (click to enlarge).

The comparison was put out in honor of the agency’s Opportunity rover, which has been on Mars since 2004, beating NASA’s previous distance record-holder, the Apollo 17 moon buggy. During its nine years of operations, Opportunity has roved 35.760 kilometers, edging out the Apollo astronaut’s 35.744-kilometer drive.

The champion for driving on another surface still goes to the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 37 kilometers across the moon in 1973. Of course, Opportunity still has the *ahem* opportunity to overtake the international record holder since it’s continuing to rove around the rim of Endeavour crater on Mars. The little robot has been exploring that area since 2011 and has uncovered some of the most unambiguous evidence for water on ancient Mars. Though NASA’s celebrated Curiosity rover has only gone less than one kilometer since landing in August, it has nuclear batteries that could last 14 years at minimum — ample time to beat all competitors.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ucresearch:

Happy Mother’s Day!

Here’s a great photo of UCLA’s Anna Fisher: the first mother in space.

Happy Mother’s Day! (If you forgot to get her something, you can buy her a chance to go to SPACE for $10 here: www.idreamofspace.com ) #truestory

(via ikenbot)

thenewenlightenmentage:

Mystery of Moon’s Magnetic Field Deepens

The moon generated a surprisingly intense magnetic field until at least 3.56 billion years ago, 160 million years longer than previously thought, a new study reports.

These findings could shed light not just on the magnetic field of the moon, which is now extremely weak, but on that of asteroids and other distant worlds, investigators added.

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How the Hubble Space Telescope Works

Launched from space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990,  the Hubble Space Telescope orbits at an altitude of about 350 miles (560 kilometers). The telescope is 43.5 feet (13.2 meters) long, weighs 24,500 pounds (11,110 kilograms) and cost $2.5 billion.

Hubble’s six cameras and sensors  see visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. At the heart of Hubble is its 8-foot-diameter (2.4 meters) primary mirror. The Hubble telescope is named after the famed late astronomer Edwin Hubble, who has been lauded as the father of modern cosmology and determined the rate of the expansion of the universe…. 

read more at http://www.space.com/20765-hubble-space-telescope-infographic.html

Our solar system’s miasma of incandescent plasma, the Sun may look a little scary here. The picture is a composite of 25 images recorded in extreme ultraviolet light by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory between April 16, 2012 and April 15, 2013.