‘The Big Picture’ marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11

Is it me or does the assistant in #6 look really bored?

NASA developed “sports drink” now available to the public

First Velcro, then memory foam, now “The Right Stuff” sports drink.

50 years ago today NASA introduced the original Mercury 7 astronauts

NASA has a nice little interactive flash version of the press conference.

Looks like the Mars Phoenix mission has ended

The sad news was sent out via Twitter.  The last Twitter post “it wrote” was binary for “Triumph”.

Guy films space shuttle launch from passing plane

I can’t tell, does the guy filming it think it’s cool?

Mars Phoenix lander has a Twitter account

Someone at NASA is Twittering on it’s behalf (when Twitter works, of course).  Today’s gem:

Team has named 3 spots where I’m going to collect samples: baby bear, mama bear, and papa bear. One of them should be just right :D

And yesterday’s:

I’ve got plenty of energy from my solar panels, so team has upped my work hours from 9a - 4p to 8a - 6:30p. No OT :-( but more science

He’ll even answer some questions if you @ him (her?).

The toilet on the ISS is backed-up

Glad to see they still have the same problems as us on Earth.  I would’ve thought that the whole zero gravity thing would have helped to prevent situations like that.

Update: It’s been fixed.

Images from ‘Phoenix’, the latest lander to visit Mars

From NASA’s press release:

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.