Space Language

 

Lunar

This short film is dedicated to all people who believe in peaceful expansion of our borders.

In the year 1957 the cold war expands to space. The Soviet Union sends Sputnik as the first man-made object into Earth orbit.

Three years later Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space. The so-called "Space Race" seems to be decided.

But in 1961, President Kennedy promised to send American astronauts to the Moon.

The Apollo Project was born. A space ship had to be built that is strong enough to escape Earth's gravitation, land on the moon and bring the crew safely back to our planet.

Digital motion designer Christian Stangl worked with his brother and composer Wolfgang for 18 months on this short film. The foundation were thousands original NASA photographs, taken by the astronauts during the Apollo missions, which were released in September 2015. It is an animated collage using different techniques to bring the stills to life. Amazing to watch!

Museum of the Moon

Luke Jerram's multidisciplinary arts practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live artworks. Living in the UK but working internationally, Jerram creates art projects which excite and inspire people around the world.

Museum of the Moon is a new touring artwork by Luke Jerram that will be presented in a number of arts and cultural festivals over the coming years. The installation is a fusion of lunar imagery, moonlight and surround sound composition.

Measuring seven metres in diameter, the moon features incredibly detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. As the artwork travels from place to place, it will gather new musical compositions and collect the local moon mythologies and stories, as well as highlighting the latest moon science.

Frost on Mars

This animated gif shows the build up of frosts in a 73 x 41 km section of the north polar ice cap of Mars between November and December 2004.
 The images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express during its first year at the Red Planet. It has been orbiting Mars for over 13 years.

The north polar icecap comprises layers of water-ice that extend to a depth of around 2 km. The layers result from seasonal melting and deposition of ice mixed with dust.
 During winter the water-ice is covered by a thin layer of carbon dioxide ice that is a few centimetres to around a metre thick.
 During the warmer summer months, most of the carbon dioxide ice turns directly into vapour and escapes into the atmosphere, leaving behind the water-ice layers.

Mankind on the Way to Mars

The Moon crossing the Earth

This is another breathtaking image from NASA. The moon was crossing the Earth with the illumination of Sun.

A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month.

In the image we can see the fully illuminated  “dark side” of the moon which is never able to be seen on the Earth.

Ice Lake on Mars

On this day in 2003, Europe launched its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express began its six-month journey from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. To celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Mars Express mission, we have gathered together some of our favorite images of this fascinating planet taken by the Mars Express’ camera. You can enjoy all the images on the European Space Agency and German Aerospace Center Flickr pages.

The Mars Express is so called because of the speed with which it was built. The lander, called Beagle 2, was named after the ship in which Charles Darwin sailed when formulating his ideas about evolution. With the Mars Express mission, Europe hopes to gain knowledge about the Martian surface and search for life or hints about the evolutionary processes on Earth.

NASA Stunning Footage from Space

News From Mars

News From Our Neighboring Planet

The New York Times. August 8, 2012

Mars never gets old. Every time we get a new look at the planet we see it in higher resolution. The earliest images shot from a dedicated spacecraft, taken by Mariner 4 in July 1965, look more like images from an abdominal ultrasound than photographs of a planet.

Now, nearly half a century later, we can watch ourselves watching Mars. After the rover Curiosity landed successfully early Monday morning, it was photographed on the Martian surface by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter passing overhead. Curiosity was already looking out toward the horizon, its instruments coming online one by one. 

This new landing — a triumph of scientific technology — tells us as much about the human imagination as it does about the fourth planet from the sun. Compared with what science fiction writers have made of Mars, the Curiosity mission looks rudimentary, almost primitive. But the spark of actuality is far more captivating than anything we can imagine. We have been seeing detailed images of Mars for years. And yet when Curiosity began transmitting from Gale Crater, it presented us with the cognitive shock of seeing Mars in something close to real time. 

Curiosity’s operations are complex, but its mission is simple: to examine the chemistry of Mars in hopes of learning whether it might have supported microbial life. The landing was a one-time drama. What we get now is the continuing drama of interplanetary observation. If all goes well, there will be a flood of data arriving from Curiosity’s sensors and cameras. And for many people, each new increment of knowledge will be a new inducement to walk outside on a clear, dark night and look for that tiny red dot of reflected light overhead. 

Related articles:

• After Safe Landing, Rover Sends Images From Mars (August 7, 2012)

• Curiosity Rover Lands Safely on Mars (August 6, 2012)

• Times Topic: Mars

The Final Frontier

“In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)” — STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ) Photo from nasa hq photo.
El Atlantis, en órbita terrestre a 560 kilómetros de altura y a 28.000 kilómetros por hora sobre la superficie de la Tierra, fue fotografiado con una cámara Canon 5D Mark II y un telescopio de 12 centímetros de diámetro utilizando un filtro solar. La nave mide 37 metros de longitud y 24 de envergadura.