The International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Sunday, May 25, 2014

A CANYON GRANDER THAN THE GRAND CANYON

FROM:  NASA 

Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars:   Explanation: The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The above mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s.  Image and story credit: Viking Project, USGS, NASA.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

"WALK THIS WAY"

FROM:  NASA 
Spacewalk Training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory 

In this image taken on Nov. 7, 2012, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (partially obscured), both Expedition 40/41 flight engineers, attired in training versions of their Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits, are submerged in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) near NASA's Johnson Space Center. Divers (out of frame) are in the water to assist Wiseman and Gerst in their rehearsal, which is intended to help prepare them for work on the exterior of the International Space Station. Wiseman, Gerst and Maxim Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will launch to the space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on May 28, 2014, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are scheduled to return to Earth in November. Image Credit: NASA.