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NASA planned to send astronauts to Mars in 1981 using Nerva nuclear rockets but congress cut NASA’s funding and Nixon cancelled the Nerva project entirely in 1973, causing Nasa to focus on the development of the Space Shuttle instead.
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Nazi rocket scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun wrote a science fiction novel in 1949 called Project Mars: A Technical Tale. The novel takes place in the 1980s and is about the first human mission to Mars and their encounter with benevolent Martians on the planet, including the Martian leader, Elon.
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While performing in Australia in 1957, Little Richard saw a fireball flying across the sky and took it to be a sign from God to repent from secular music and his wild lifestyle at the time; he wouldn’t return to secular music until 1962. The fireball that he saw was the launch of Sputnik 1.
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The first toilet paper factory in the USSR was built in 1969, 8 years after they went to space.
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While the Americans sent space probes to Mars, the Soviets sent many probes to Venus, of which 8 of them successfully landed on the Venusian surface and took the first measurements and pictures of the planet’s surface, showing Venus to be a hot, hellish wasteland.
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Space is full of different shapes, sizes, and colors. There’s the vibrant blue of Earth’s oceans, the cheese-like exterior of the moon, the octopus-esque tentacles of galaxies — the list goes on and on.
Scientists also use the word “flocculent” to describe some galaxies, including one recently captured by the camera on the NASA?ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Translated into English, flocculent basically means fluffy.
Yes, that’s right, the world’s pre-eminent researchers and scientists just described a galaxy as fluffy! And just look at how adorable this fluffy little guy really is:
Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble & Nasa, J. Lee and the Phangs-Hst Team
This striking photograph shows a galaxy that goes by the name NGC 2275. It’s far, far away from us here on Earth, located 67 million light-years away. It’s situated within the Cancer constellation.
NASA noted its “delicate, feathery nature,” which you can see super clearly from this crisp image. Those spiral arms are made up of millions of young stars, contrasted with lanes of dark space dust. The stars are young and hot, which makes them appear blue.
According to NASA….
“Complexes of these hot, blue stars are thought to trigger star formation in nearby gas clouds.
The overall feather-like spiral patterns of the arms are then formed by shearing of the gas clouds as the galaxy rotates.”
The space agency says that the fluffiness also indicates relatively quiet star formation in the galaxy.
NASA says,
“There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.”
How cool is that? The Hubble telescope has really opened up our ability to analyze and understand space, including these interesting little details.
What’s your favorite element of space? Do you have a particular planet or feature that you’re particularly partial to for some reason?
We’d love to hear from you!
Let us know in the comments!
The post This Fluffy Galaxy Captured by the Hubble Telescope’s Camera Is Truly Amazing appeared first on UberFacts.
This is great!
NASA is taking “one giant leap for mankind” by honoring the first black woman engineer in its history.
The organization is naming its headquarters in Washington, D.C. after Mary W. Jackson, one of the “hidden figures” who helped the United States blast off into space decades ago.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The move comes amidst a growing awareness and protests against racism and police brutality. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said naming the building after Jackson is just one more step in bringing these “hidden” figures come out of the shadows and into the light.
“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space. Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.
(The building) appropriately sits on ‘Hidden Figures Way,’ a reminder that Mary is one of many incredible and talented professionals in NASA’s history who contributed to this agency’s success. Hidden no more, we will continue to recognize the contributions of women, African Americans and people of all backgrounds who have made NASA’s successful history of exploration possible.”
Jackson got her start at NASA working at Langley’s Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in the early 1950s. At the time, she worked in a segregated division — the West Area Computing Unit. She earned degrees in math and physical sciences in 1942 and held positions as a bookkeeper, math teacher and U.S. Army secretary before starting her career in aerospace.
Photo Credit: NASA
At Langley, Jackson was one of the “human computers” who worked at the agency, aka a research mathematician. She advanced in her career at NASA, conducting experiments in a 60,000-horsepower wind tunnel.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
On the recommendation of her supervisor, she entered a special training program to become an engineer (it’s worth noting that she had to get special permission to join white students in the program). She later became NASA’s first blake female engineer.
She retired in 1985 and died in 2005. In 2019, Congress posthumously awarded her the Congressional Gold Medal.
Now, she’s also being bestowed with yet another honor: the name of NASA headquarters. Whenever anyone visits or makes plans to visit the building, they’ll be reminded of her enduring legacy.
What do you think of this move by NASA?
Let us know in the comments!
We’d love to hear from you!
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In the 60s Zambia planned to send “Afronauts” to land on Mars and the Moon. The Mars mission was planned to send a ‘spacegirl’, two cats and a missionary to convert the Martians to Christianity.
In the 60s Zambia planned to send “Afronauts” to land on Mars and the Moon. The Mars mission was planned to send a ‘spacegirl’, two cats and a missionary to convert the Martians to Christianity.
While in the USSR, Neil Armstrong collected a handful of soil from outside a Ukrainian man’s house in Siberia to acknowledge that man’s contribution to Apollo-11 Moon Mission. The gravitational trajectory adopted by Apollo-11 program to reach the Moon is named after that man – ‘The Kondratyuk Rout’.