Irene Klotz for Reuters:
“This was a critical event for NASA and the nation tonight,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “Just over a year after the retirement of the space shuttle, we have returned space station cargo-resupply missions to U.S. soil.”
By “we,” of course, Bolden meant a private company, and not the federal government.
Nell Greenfieldboyce at NPR:
Space shuttle Endeavour begins a kind of farewell tour this week. The shuttle will set off on a cross-country trip to its retirement home, flying from Florida to Los Angeles on the back of a modified jumbo jet.
[…]
Then, after processing at the airport, the shuttle will have to make a long, unprecedented trip through city streets. The giant spaceship will ride on top of a special transporter for about 12 miles.
The Soviet moon program is nuts, and undeserving of being stuck in Apollo’s shadow.
Ulysse Merou:
Searching for organic carbon compounds buried in soil 35 million miles from home? There’s an app for that.
Faced with severe budget cutbacks, NASA has turned to Apple for help with its next Mars lander.
Man, I love Scoopertino.
Kyle beat me to writing this article.
There are a handful of historical achievements that truly blow my mind. Armstrong stepping off the lunar lander on to the dusty surface of the moon is one of them. America lost a hero today.
Twenty years ago, that headline would have sounded like something out of a movie.
NASA can update its hardware faster than most Android OEMs.
Adam Mann at Wired has outlined seven plans that have been circulated over the years to get man to Mars:
As every space enthusiast knows, we will land people on Mars within 20 years.
Of course, we’ve been 20 years away from Mars for the last half-century. Between 1950 and 2000, NASA and various independent groups have come up with more than 1,000 detailed studies for manned Mars missions. Yet not a single one has come very close to fruition. At least on paper, Mars remains an eventual NASA goal, with their latest Curiosity rover seen in some ways as a precursor to human missions.
Leslie Horn at Gizmodo:
Last night NASA landed on Mars. An amazing feat! But guess what? The Curiosity rover’s on-board computer is a pretty low-power system. In fact, the iPhone 4S is four times more powerful. Check out the specs below.
Specs aren’t everything, it seems.
Kenneth Chang for The New York Times:
In a flawless, triumphant technological tour de force, a plutonium-powered rover the size of a small car was lowered at the end of 25-foot-long cables from a hovering rocket stage onto Mars early on Monday morning.
We live in the future.