My daughter recently exhausted her supply of coloring books, launching me into an exploration of Pinterest‘s printable coloring pages. We found countless abstract and nature coloring pages, as well as simpler designs for younger kids. I even found some space and science-themed coloring pages NASA, Dover Publications, and others have created. Being a huge space geek, however, I wanted more. Sometimes, wanting more means having to create it yourself, and that is just what I am setting out to do. [Read more…]
Rosetta Mission & Philae’s #CometLanding – A Primer
Hopefully by now, even if you do not generally follow “space news,” you are aware that humanity achieved something truly incredible on Wednesday, November 12, at 17:03 CET (Central European Time) / 11:03am EST — we landed a small robotic spacecraft on a comet! After 10 years in transit from Earth, the European Space Agency‘s Philae lander was successfully released from its mothership, the Rosetta orbiter, and descended to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The dishwasher-sized lander is now the only object ever to perform a controlled landing on a comet. [Read more…]
Free Stuff from NASA
Photo Credit: NASA
What’s NASA done for you lately? Oh, you mean apart from keeping a continuously inhabited orbiting laboratory (International Space Station) in productive operation for over 12 years (since November 2, 2000,) monitoring probes sent to the farthest reaches of our Solar System (Voyager 1 & Voyager 2), and a probe arriving at Jupiter in 2016 (Juno), launching countless scientific missions to study the Earth (Van Allen Probes), Sun (Solar Dynamics Observatory), and Moon (GRAIL), and landing a 2000 lb. robotic rover (Mars Curiosity) on the surface of Mars via a never-before-used SkyCrane…?
Here on Earth, NASA is also busy inspiring and educating, through its award-winning NASA Social events, open houses, and a wealth of free stuff: desktop wallpapers, ebooks, apps, paper spacecraft models, posters, and more! [Read more…]