Six years ago, at exactly this moment, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated above the skys south of Dallas, TX in a catastrophe that shocked the world. I think it’s appropriate that we honor the memory of those fallen astronauts who gave their lives in the quest to expand human knowledge.

Chris Valentines produced the following video by reconstructing the entire Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and synchronizing a number of video and audio recordings into a single real time stream of the disaster. He’s also got a lot more analysis and commentary on the timeline of events on his site.
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I thought this was cool, so just wanted to share this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of a cloud-free view of the Middle Eastern countries surrounding the Fertile Crescent. (I got the image from NASA.)

Arching along the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea from the Red Sea through modern-day Syria, and then across to the Persian Gulf in an upside-down “u” shape, the Fertile Crescent is a rich, food growing area in an otherwise dry, barren land. Anciently, the land nurtured some of the earliest recorded human civilizations. Even today, a narrow strip of green along the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River marks out the Fertile Crescent.

The description from this fascinating video is:

As part of the Saturday Morning Science program by Don Pettit during Expedition 6 to the International Space Station, his video “Cities at Night; an Orbital Tour Around the World” is a video made from digital still images. This video was made for educational presentations.

You can see an entire overview of the Cities at Night project here.

Frankly, as cool as the cities look from space, what I find most amazing is how they actually took these photos! Those freaking astronauts are improvisational geniuses! Don Pettit built and installed a “barn-door tracker” – from spare parts no less – to enable him to take nighttime photographs from the International Space Station.
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Almost a year ago I wrote about the new Microsoft Photosynth technology, calling it The coolest photo technology I’ve ever seen. I still think that. Dammit! How much longer do we have to wait for a public release? Seriously this is Microsoft’s main problem – they… take… too… long… to… do… anything. Let’s have it already!

Anyway, here is a neat demo of the technology as applied to the Space Shuttle. You need to follow this link to go and actually check out the image collection.

For Endeavour’s historic launch on August 7th, 2007, Live Labs joined forces with NASA to provide a Photosynth tour of the shuttle from vehicle assembly building to the launch pad. Thousands of photos intertwine to provide three dimensional, 360 degree perspectives of one of human kind’s greatest innovations.

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Wow, Panoramas.dk is one of the greatest sites I’ve ever come across. It features a number of three dimensional panoramas which allow you to virtually look around a given space. This is a technology that can only flourish on the Web since you cannot move around inside a static photograph.

There are virtual reality panoramas of the Eiffel Tower, Carnival in Rio, a Camel Carts in Bikaner India, a human Zoo, an ariel view of Sydney Australia and even the Apollo Moon Landings.

The site can be a little difficult to navigate so I compiled the following list of several I enjoyed.
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There is a very, very cool interactive demo that Nikon is presenting over on their site called the Universcale.

Let’s see, how can I describe it… well, it’s kind of like this video which I previously posted that shows how the size of our planets relate to other objects in the universe, except that the Universcale is interactive and also goes the other way all the way down to subatomic particles.

It really has to be seen to be understood, and it is well worth seeing.
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Auroras are caused by the collision of charged particles in the magnetosphere with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

These charged particles are energized to levels between 1,000 and 15,000 electron-volts and as they collide with atoms of gases in the atmosphere the atoms become energized, then emit their energy as light.

For those of us that will likely never be fortunate enough to see the Aurora Borealis in person, here is a time lapse video of one of the most extraordinary sites in nature. Wikipedia also has a fantastic entry for Auroras.
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I recently came across a very cool program along the lines of Google Earth, except this program lets you fly around and explore all manner of objects and places in outer space.

Here is a demo video I created from the built in demonstration mode within Celestia. I highly recommend that everyone download and try out Celestia.
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It’s kind of sad to me that there are people out there that actually don’t believe that we went to the moon… but I guess it takes all kinds.

For those people, here is a video which claims to refute any of the edicts they cling to and indeed offers proof to the contrary. Still, people are going to believe what they want to believe…
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This truly amazing video was captured by the cameras mounted on the sides of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) as they’re blown clear of the space shuttle Atlantis during the launch of STS-115.

What I find to be really facinating is the fact that these boosters fall back to earth and splash down in only about 4 minutes. I can’t get to the grocery store in 4 minutes, but these things glide down from space. Man, we’ve got a thin atmosphere…
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Space.com recently reported on a plan by NASA to impact the moon in an area believed to have a potential store of surface ice.

The impact will create a huge cloud of material that can be remotely analyzed for water content. This data will enable planners to work through the complexities of building a permanent human settlement on the moon.
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Although China will be hosting the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee meeting in April, that didn’t keep them from making the colossal mistake on January 11, 2007 of firing an anti-satellite rocket at an old piece of space junk, shattering it into at least 1,000 new pieces of debris now in orbit around the planet.

Space was already so cluttered that scientists live in fear of a chain reaction which will make launching vehicles nearly impossible. They claim that there is already so much floating around that it’s a matter of when, not if, pieces will begin colliding – creating more pieces – and eventually forming an impenetrable belt around the planet.
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