Many of you (222 kids especially) had a ton of questions about sending animals into space. Now you can learn more about the history of monkeys in space. Click on the picture to see National Geographic’s 50th Anniversary photo gallery.
Voyager was launched shortly before I was born and has now left the solar system. There is a lot of empty space between stars, so it doesn’t have much to take pictures of right now.
The first Star Trek movie ever made was about what might happen to Voyager if it keeps going on and on and learning more and more… not exactly realistic, but interesting.
This latest spacewalk was very difficult – the astronauts needed to remove and install many tiny pieces that just wouldn’t seem to cooperate. At one point, a tool battery died and they had to replace it, and add more oxygen to the astronaut’s tank, before he could continue.
Click here to learn more about NASA’s mission to the Hubble Space telescope. Includes step-by-step visuals about what the astronauts will do, information about how the telescope works, and video about the mission. Also, some of the best photos that Hubble has taken of our universe!
Brief video explaining the Hubble mission and introducing the astronauts…
Launch of the space shuttle to begin this mission…
Want to explore Mars? You don’t need to build a multimillion dollar satellite or send a rover. Instead all you need is a web browser and Google Mars:
Click on the image to try!
Also, if you have the latest version of Google Earth on your computer, you can access Google Mars in 3D! Highly recommended!
The Cluster B classes have been studying the planets in our own solar system and finding out why Earth is so unique and special. But could there be planets somewhere else in the universe that we could live on? Recently scientists announced that they have found some…
The red glowing object is Gliese 581, a red dwarf star. There are several rocky planets orbiting it, each named for the star – Gliese 581c, Gliese 581d, and Gliese 581e. Last week, scientists announced that “d” and “e” were the planets most like Earth that have ever been found.
Here’s a video showing the whole system:
This next video shows some planets that orbit around other stars, that could be like our own planet Earth. These stars are very far away and it is currently too hard to take a picture of them, much less go there. The video also talks about why Venus and Mars didn’t end up having life, the way Earth did.
When volcanoes erupt, there is a huge cloud of dust, gas, and sometimes ash. For a long time, scientists have known that there are lightning strikes inside these clouds, but needed to invent a way to screen out the cloud itself to get a picture of what was going on inside.
This image was taken by the Lightning Mapping Array, set up by scientists to take measurements inside the volcanic cloud at Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The scientists set up their equipment when they heard that Mt. Redoubt was getting ready to erupt again, and waited two months until the eruptions began. Here’s yet another reason why it’s important to monitor volcanoes!
What does our Sun look like today? Click here to take a look!
Some of the images you’ll see were taken with special cameras. There are some kinds of light that our eyes can’t see, like UV rays (the kind that give you sunburn) so we use these cameras to take pictures of the Sun, sort of like an X-ray machine takes pictures of your bones.
Click here to learn more facts about the Sun. From National Geographic’s great website about the solar system!
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