I don’t care what you say. Astronauts have balls of steel. They strap themselves onto a rocket, shit in a vacuum, and are risking death by space junk tonight. Read More

Lucky cosmonaut and astronauts. Not only do they get the best corner office view ever, but they also have a legit version of Star Trek downloaded. The three men currently on board the International Space Station received a special copy of the film via NASA and settled into a dark node of the station to enjoy the show yesterday.

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You may have heard last week, while withdrawing all your money from Citibank, that an astronaut lost her tool bag while performing a routine space walk. (Late night comics made jokes along the lines of, “Why does she need her pocketbook up there?”) Well, as luck would have, a “veteran space watcher” may have discovered the bag floating around space. In fact, if you’re in the northeast of the U.S. you may able to spot it, too, provided you have a decent telescope. I mean, what could be more exciting than combing the heavens for a bag?

ABC News has an un-embeddable video on its site of the bag streaking across. The first comment I say made me laugh, too: We can find a bag floating in space but we can’t find Osama bin Laden?

It’s a $750,000,000 contract, and this is what they’ve got? Come on, Oceaneering International. You could have whipped up a cool-looking prototype out of surgical tubing and PVC in the time it took to make those artist’s conceptions.

The new suits are being developed for the next major moon mission, Constellation. They’re rejiggering everything from the suits to the mode of transportation (bye bye shuttle) and this is the first look at the new space gear.
Configuration 1, left, is for takeoff, landing, and occasional spacewalks.
Configuration 2, middle, is optimized for walking around on the moon (resistant to moon rocks).
Configuration 3, on the right, is for after the moon base is left undisturbed for years and the astronauts revert to savage infighting and genetic modification.
[via New Scientist]

Whuh oh. Seems the only toilet on the ISS is busted and they can’t get a plumber out there until next week. Astronauts aboard the space station have been able to impose upon the nearby Russian Soyuz spacecraft, using its limited-capacity toilet in a pinch, and have now apparently rigged some sort of sack-like contraption to the toilet on the ISS. Sounds delightful.

The good news is that the problems are only occurring when going number one. The astronauts can go number two just fine, Lord o’ Mercy.

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Matt tells me this guy has been performing all kinds of semi-trivial experiments like blowing bubblegum bubbles, hitting golf balls of the space station, and now testing the complicated physics involved in boomerangology. I’d say this experiment was a complete and delicious success.
[via Pink Tentacle]