Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Today marks the 45th anniversary of the tragic fire that killed the 3 crew members of Apollo 1.
Apollo 1’s crew, consisting of Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee, died when a fire broke out in their capsule during a “plugs-out” test.
The mission, originally known as AS-204, was redesignated Apollo I in honor of the crew. This photo shows the astronauts in training: (L to R) Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom.
cwnl:
NASA Telescope Discovers 26 Alien Planets Around 11 Different Stars
Credit: NASA Ames/UC Santa Cruz
Image: This artist’s concept shows an overhead view of the orbital position of the planets in systems with multiple transiting planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, and announced on Jan. 26, 2012. All the colored planets have been verified. The planet candidates shown in grey have not yet been verified.
NASA’s prolific planet-hunting spacecraft has hit the jackpot again, discovering 11 new planetary systems with 26 confirmed alien planets among them.
The findings nearly double the number of bona fide planets found outside our solar system by the Kepler space observatory.
“Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,” Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. “Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.”
The newly detected worlds vary in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter; 15 of the 26 planets fall between Earth and Neptune in size. While all of the planets tightly orbit their parent stars, more research will be required to determine which worlds are rocky like Earth, and which have thick, gaseous atmospheres like Neptune, the scientists said.
ALIEN PLANETS!
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life:
Look carefully: You can just make out Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger, Jr. in a record-shattering free fall from the very edge of space on August 16, 1960, after jumping from a balloon-supported gondola 102,800 feet above New Mexico.
During his descent, Kittinger reached approximate speeds of 614 miles an hour. The clouds beneath him are 15 miles away. Kittinger’s leap was part of the Air Force’s “Project Excelsior,” which conducted research into high altitude bailouts from aircraft. Incredibly, almost 50 years later, Kittinger’s record for the longest-ever free fall and highest parachute jump still stand.
(see more — 21 Greatest-Ever Space Photos)
Is there a statue of this guy somewhere? There should be.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
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