It was exactly 40 years ago today that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the Moon. We’ve gathered a collection of videos and new reports that tell the story as well today as they did those years ago. Enjoy. Read More

There has been a good deal of focus on the Moon lately. First, the LRO sent back high-res photos of the surface, which was followed by the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the release of restored video footage from the Moon. Then the LRO produced the first photos of the equipment left behind from the Apollo missions and Walter Cronkite, the trusted voice who informed America about the events, passed away.

The LA Times is keeping the buzz alive with a fantastic article about the construction of the Saturn V rocket that shot the astronauts to the Moon.

“What set us apart was our ability to build a very big rocket to get us to the moon,” said Roger Launius, the Smithsonian Institution’s space historian, reflecting on the U.S.’ race with the then-Soviet Union to reach the moon first. “The Russians were never able to do that.”

If you think about it, that’s about as accurate as it gets. Our engineers who were backed by a massive budget, out-developed the Soviets with the Saturn V rocket. Well done, boys. Well done.

As soon as the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sent back the first high-res photos of the moon a few days ago, I was eager to see the Apollo landing sites. It’s not that I didn’t believe that man walked on the moon 40 years ago, but rather out of simple nerd curiosity. Well, NASA made good on its promise and just released images showing the landing sites of Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Read More

Lowry Digital in Burbank has been restoring old Apollo footage for a while now and NASA just released a small sample of the work. Now, the restoration doesn’t do wonders to the 40 year old stock, but it’s at least better than nothing. Maybe now we can make out that damn coke can more clearly as it bounces across the “Moon surface.” (kidding) More footage will be released this fall.

Click through for two more clips.

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Question: What do you do with a 654,000 pound space station with no budget past 2015? Read More

BMW is out to improve its vehicles efficiencies and has turned to NASA for help. The car company plans on equipping thermoelectric generators on upcoming models to power secondary systems and therefore improving gasoline economy. Now, this update to BMW’s Efficient Dynamics isn’t a huge leap forward, but rather an evolutionary step towards the space age.

Some satellites employ similar thermoelectric generators on satellites where the power is derived from the heat generated by radioactive decay which is then turned back into electricity. BMW’s system works similarly – sans the nuclear power of course – by harnessing the combustion engine’s hot exhaust for something other than polluting. This system generates up to 200W of power which is enough to power even high-demand electrical systems such as climate control and therefore taking strain off of the motor’s electrical generation system.

This passive system improves gasoline efficiency by nearly 5%. That’s not a whole lot, but it’s better than stop-start brake energy regeneration that recovers energy wasted on braking. Plus, it shows that the company is committed to find better ways of working with current combustion platforms rather than reinventing the wheel in times of economy doom and gloom.

BMW expects to get this system on models by the 2014 model year. Better start saving pennies now.

CAR via Autoblog

Flight of the Navigator 2? Nope. 

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A little more than you were probably planning on spending this holiday season, but… if you’re in the market for a slightly used space shuttle and have the space for it (climate control is a must), you’re not going to find it for any cheaper than this. Even on Craigslist. Sorry, main engines are not included (available separately for $400,000-$800,000).

The shuttle itself is actually going for $42m (OBO) — where they really get you is the shipping: $6m at the minimum for piggybacking on a custom jumbo jet to your local airport. Why can’t they just drop it in from orbit?

[via PhysOrg]

The forces of nature can be awesome. The sheer size and power of Hurricane Ike was witnessed by millions here on Terra Firma, but a select few had a dry view high up in the sky. These Astronauts aboard the International Space Station saw massive Ike from 220 miles up and took some amazing pictures of the storm from this vantage point. The kind folks at Nasa were nice ‘nough to make the full resolution pics available to us land dwellers so we too can witness the magnitude of the storm.

The world’s lightest known solid, Aerogel, weighs only three times as much as air. As air, mind you. You could practically breathe the stuff, but you wouldn’t want to because, basically it’s glass. Really, really, fluffy glass.

It has been used by NASA as insulation for the Mars Pathfinder Rover. Not only is it a great insulator, but it is also made from silicon dioxide, so it can do other glass-like activities. NASA recently used it in the Stardust mission as a collector plate for comet & interstellar dust samples.

The stuff is also incredibly expensive, but that didn’t stop Jason Wells from putting it through the paces. He fried it, shocked it, froze it, baked it, soaked it and eventually smashed it. It’s all highly documented, with pictures, and makes for some good lunchtime reading. Especially since you’re never going to go out and actually buy the stuff.

Poor NASA. They never get any play until they blow something up. Last week they did it again. On Friday safety officials said a suborbital rocket had to be destroyed because it deviated from its flight path.

There were a couple of experiments on board that will have to wait for another day. NASA said:

The Alliant Techsystems rocket was carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments. The Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition experiment was designed to gather data on air flow conditions and heating on vehicles flying at hypersonic speeds. The Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment was designed to evaluate a possible shape for a space capsule that could travel to Mars and gather data on atmospheric conditions encountered by the reentering probes.

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Here’s a tidbit of information for your next dinner party. Apparently, you can’t make fake urine. Can’t be done! In light of this fact, NASA is asking its employees in Houston’s Johnson Space Center to share their pee pee in order to test out the magical, wonderful toilet that’s going into the new Orion space capsule.

Toilets are a serious matter for NASA and urine apparently contains copious amounts of solid particles, which can wreak havoc on waste systems while in outer space. Remember when the toilet on the International Space Station was broken?

In a recent internal memo, NASA asked for almost eight gallons of urine per day from its employees, which is roughly equivalent to the daily number one-ing of 30 people.

via CNN

There’s a real ruckus about photographer Trevor Paglen’s project to document all those secret satellites. It makes you forget sometimes that there are plenty of legitimate, non-spy satellites up there doing lots of good work. For instance, NASA has just successfully launched the Jason-2 satellite, which will be set up to monitor ocean currents, weather patterns, and all that good stuff so we’ll have more and better data to use for prediction of storm systems, global warming hotspots and the like.

If you’re interested in that stuff, there’s some more info here and video of the satellite separation here (upper right). Rock on, NASA.