A Camouflaged Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-21-IIb Bomber Seconds Before Its Destruction By Parafrag Bombs Dropped

Twilight’s Rainbow Power form by FantasyBlade

Mirage 2000EG cockpit (Hellenic 2000-5 variant)

Instructions to attach a Space Shuttle to the 747 carrier aircraft. You have to love NASA’s sense of humor.

Solar System: 5 Things to Know This Week

From Mars to the asteroid belt to Saturn, our hardworking space robots are exploring the solar system. These mechanical emissaries orbit distant worlds or rove across alien landscapes, going places that are too remote or too dangerous for people (for now).

We often show off the pictures that these spacecraft send home, but this week we’re turning that around: here are some of the best pictures of the space robots, taken by other robots (or themselves), in deep space.

1. So Selfless with the Selfies

The Mars Curiosity rover makes breathtaking panoramas of the Martian landscape — and looks good doing it. This mission is famous for the remarkable self portraits of its robotic geologist in action. See more Martian selfies HERE. You can also try this draggable 360 panorama HERE. Find out how the rover team makes these images HERE.

2. Two Spaceships Passing in the Moonlight

In a feat of timing on Jan. 14, 2014, our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a snapshot of LADEE, another robotic spacecraft that was orbiting the moon at the time. LADEE zoomed past at a distance of only about five miles below.

3. Bon Voyage, Galileo

The history-making Galileo mission to Jupiter set sail from the cargo bay of another spacecraft, Space Shuttle Atlantis, on Oct. 18, 1989. Get ready for Juno, which is the next spacecraft to arrive at Jupiter in July.

4. Cometary Close-Up

Using a camera on the Philae lander, the Rosetta spacecraft snapped an extraordinary self portrait at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of about 10 miles. The image captures the side of Rosetta and one of its 14-meter-long solar wings, with the comet in the background. Learn more about Rosetta HERE.

5. Man and Machine

This snapshot captures a remarkable moment in the history of exploration: the one and only time a human met up in space with a robotic forerunner on location. The Surveyor 3 lander helped pave the way for the astronaut footsteps that came a few years later. See the story of Apollo 12 and this unique encounter HERE.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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

The ultimate short field landing.

PAK FA T-50 by Distantstarr

I think a lot of us know this beautiful video from Apollo 4 unmanned launch.

A lot of nerding, rocket stuff, trivia and technical info below:

Some of you may wonder: “Why am i not seeing the rocket exhaust?” or “When the second stage will fire?”. The answer is: They already are firing, since just after separation. S-II (the second stage), unlike first one is fueled by the liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen mixture, which is invisible when burning. This is also (in)visible on Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs). What you can see, is the high temperature heating up and burning the the S-Ic and the interstage.

The S-Ic (first stage) and S-II (second stage) separated in a somewhat unusual fashion. Usually an interstage (the part holding stages together) is separated with a lower stage. In Saturn V however the second stage engines occupy so much space, that a “direct” separation could have destroyed S-II engines, so the interstage was separated a few seconds after the first stage to avoid that scenario.

The first, bright fire was a shaped charge (an explsive) used to break split the rocket in two. How else do you think you could separate a thing THAT big, THAT quickly?

The cameras were then dropped from the rocket (as seen at the end of the video) and picked up from the ocean.

And this time a S-Ic  S-II separation from the FREAKING APOLLO 11! The same rocket that put men on the Moon! This time from the external perspective (also known as “staying on the ground, NOT GOING TO THE FREAKING MOON!”).

As before, expect fanboying and trivia below.

You can see the first stage (S-Ic) cutoff, as a sudden decrease in the size of the exhaust plume. At that time, only four outboard engines were firing, the center one was shut down as expected, to prevent pogo oscillations (oscillations + rockets != good_things)

The big explosion was just the stage separation. Using explosives to separate huge stacks of explosives. Surprisingly a good idea.

Even though the S-Ic engines were already shut down, they still produced some leftover exhaust, which you can easily see