Happy 50th Birthday NASA!

It was on this date, July 29th, 1959, that Eisenhower officially signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. Space.com has a good summary of the events that led up to that moment.

In honor of NASA's big day, I'd like to point out the new NASAimages.org site, a service of the internet archive, where you can easily search for just about any image NASA has ever taken. I've played with it a little, and I have to say the search engine is considerably better than other NASA image databases I've used. Try plugging in your favorite color, or your name (there were 86 hits on Sarah!), or your favorite moon, just to see what pops up.

Breaking News: Water Found on Mars, Again

Lakes and Rivers and Deltas, oh my!

OMG, they found evidence of water on Mars! Can you believe it? And apparently, it's not just regular water, it's "hardworking" water. None of that slacker, do-nothing water for Mars.

Why do I have the strangest feeling of deja vu?

I don't mean to make fun of the research, it's actually pretty cool stuff, but seriously people, we get it, Mars was wet. Really wet. For a long time.

image credit/copyright: Ellen Roper (GCC)

New Painting

I came across this anonymous quote somewhere recently:

"Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the Moon."

And it inspired this painting...



I think I'm going to use the quote as the title, which is a ridiculously long title, but for some reason it makes me happy.

Star Trek is what's killing the space program!?

According to Buzz Aldrin, the lack of interest among "young people" in the space program is due to "all the shows where they beam people around and things like that" because "they have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Wow, I'm thinking that would come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers (myself included) that cite Star Trek in particular and science fiction in general as one of the main things that got them interested in space.

The literal kind of space art

Okay, I'm a space artist, by which I mean I paint space-related things, but this guy is a more literal kind of space artist, in that he attempted to paint in zero-G on board a vomit comet. Apparently he's into creating art "in impractical places." You can judge his success for yourself, here is the video. (via NASAwatch)