Pathfinder (OV-201) Launching From Its Lockheed C-5 Carrier And Accelerating To The Moon During Her Maiden

Path of the Hermes spacecraft in “The Martian”.

Red dot - Mars

Blue dot - Earth

Moving white dot - Hermes

Two astronauts asleep on Challenger’s middeck, August 9th 1983 ‘On Challenger’s middeck, Commander Richard “Dick” Truly and Mission Specialist (MS) Guion Bluford sleep in front of forward lockers and port side wall. Truly sleeps with his head at the ceiling and his feet to the floor. Bluford, wearing sleep mask (blindfold), is oriented with the top of his head at the floor and his feet on the ceiling.’

Credit to the NASA Archives.

Lots of cool moments with the crew in this video. They seem very easy-going and friendly. The fact that they're doing EVA and docking tests could imply that this crew might get to fly on future Artemis missions!

Especially liked the EVA training in the neutral buoyancy lab. The underwater audio is so relaxing. It must be very comfy for those scuba divers down there.

Southern moonscape

STS-31 on Approach by NASA on The Commons

The Moon is unconventionally beautiful

The Moon is round, blotchy, spotty, rough-skinned, 'imperfect'. Try and tell me The Moon isn't beautiful.

Take a picture of The Moon with your phone. Looks bad, right? Cameras have a habit of taking something beautiful and making it look bad.

[Image description: a dark, blurry iPhone picture of the Moon and some distant artificial lights. The only detail that can be made out is the crescent shape. End ID]

Some more facts about The Moon

The surface is darker than asphalt.

It isn't symmetrical. The farside has more craters and less maria than the nearside.

Some people see a face on it. This is known as 'The Man on The Moon'

It takes moonlight 1.2 seconds to reach Earth at the speed of light

Space looks very different to how film and television might show. Lots of sci-fi shows or movies portray the stars and galaxy behind a planet, and while it can look pretty, it also is very unrealistic. Stars are very dim. The galaxy is even dimmer. Anybody that lives in a light-pollluted area knows these things. Sunlight, and the light from it that shines onto the planets, is very very bright. This is why you can’t see stars during the day time. You can turn the exposure of your camera up to see both the planet and the stars, but then the planet becomes blindingly bright, and you get lots of camera glare.

Images taken using Space Engine 0.990.37.1720

Unrelated spiritual stuff below

This post probably sounds like nitpicking, and I guess it is. I’m not sure if I like the spirit of space being tampered with just to make things look better in a blockbuster movie. I believe the darkness and quietness is what contains the energy of space, and that feature of it is sacred. Space to me is an ocean, and filling space with clouds/nebulae and planets in a fictional setting feels a lot like completely filling the oceans with seaweed and sand. Planets are extremely far apart, and that is a blessing, as otherwise they would collide with each other. I don’t really have any personal grudges on people that exaggerate space for visual or story related reasons, I think it’s more of a cultural issue, and one that will be resolved over enough time as life on Earth begins to wander into space.

Concept art of the Space Shuttle returning from Space.

Artwork by G. Harry Stine

Date: 1978

Posted on Flickr by Numbers Station: link, link

Titan: Ligeia Mare and environs

Numerous lakes of hydrocarbons and seas are visible: at the top is the prominent body of liquid known as Ligeia Mare; the main centers are in the northernmost part of Kraken Mare and on the island of Mayda Insula; and in the bottom center is a portion of Punga Mare. In the lower right corner, Jingpo Lacus reveals a series of sinuous canals in its lake bed, while Bolsena Lacus appears in the lower left corner.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Ian Regan

Animated gif for a class that I procrastinated on for like a month! It’s Sally Ride, who I had a mild obsession with in like elementary school