Marvin Created A Displacement Map From The Moon Landscape By The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). He's

A Mechanical Harmony to NASA’s Webb Telescope Sunshield

NASA’s Webb telescope sunshield, opened for inspection. In this photo, engineers and scientists examine the sunshield layers on this full-sized test unit.    Image courtesy Northrop Grumman and Alex Evers. For a larger version of this image please go here. Watch a video on the research here and here.

Read more ~ SpaceDaily

The Human Body Isn’t Ready For Mars

We’re very close to having the technology to send astronauts to the red planet, but that doesn’t mean the human body is physically ready for such an endeavor. Right now, it would take between 6 and 8 months to get to Mars and during the trip astronauts would be at risk for vision impairment, bone density loss, and even muscle atrophy.

So, what would it take? Find out here

     This SR-71 Blackbird cockpit got more flight time than all of the other Blackbird aircraft put together, and every single SR pilot, at one point or another, had their hands on these stick and throttles. This is the one and only SR-71 simulator, used for crew selection and training, on display at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.

     Even though this is a simulator, this is truly a Blackbird cockpit. Every component is the same, and the only visual difference are the windows are not transparent. At one point, the Air Force considered installing a virtual reality display system in the windows, but it was decided that the Blackbird simulator did not need a visual reference to the world surrounding them, because in this bird, you were more of a systems operator than a pilot. 

     This simulator, operating from 1965 to 1999, was just as top secret as any of the Blackbird aircraft, for obvious reasons. Every Blackbird pilot went through a selection process, and a year of training. During the selection process, applicants spent 30 hours in the simulator. If you were lucky enough to be selected as a pilot, you spent 100 hours in the sim before you would even touch one of the two-seat SR-71B or SR-71C trainer aircraft. This training process was longer and more intensive than any aircraft in the world, excluding the space shuttle. This was because each Blackbird was truly a national asset, and there were so few of them.

     Nearly every Blackbird pilot author, at one point or another, has mentioned this simulator in their book. They recount tales of sweating bullets during the selection process, spending hours in the sim at a time, learning hard lessons. They also tell about how good the sim was, and how once they finally flew an actual Blackbird, they felt right at home.

     The Frontiers of Flight Museum was gracious enough to let Project Habu inside the cockpit to photograph up close, which is typically not open to the public. It was truly surreal to sit in this cockpit and touch the controls, knowing every one of the pilots whom I admire so much, started right here. You can view the outside of the simulator in a previous post (click here to view). 

MEN! WOMEN! Guard your homeworld!

(In the Paratus universe, the Soviets landed on the Moon first.)

Newly Released High Resolution Film Scans from Apollo Missions

8,434 photos from the Apollo missions were just uploaded to flickr by NASA! 

By artist Kory Hubbell.

Stars and Dust Pillars in NGC 7822 from WISE.

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Cone Nebula

A large, faint emission nebula and bright galactic association of stars known as The Christmas Tree Cluster form object NGC 2264, which itself contains a unique feature known as the Cone Nebula. The Cone Nebula’s shape comes from a dark absorption nebula consisting of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by nearby star S Monocerotos, the brightest star of NGC 2264. The faint nebula is approximately seven light-years long and is 2,700 light-years away from Earth.

Credit: David M. Jurasevich