Ramblings from Apalapachia...

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

an article on the subject for the curious:

nasa: we're going to shoot three rockets directly at the sun during the total eclipse. for study and research purposes.

me: oh cool

nasa: we have named the rockets apep. this stands for atmospheric perturbations [in the] eclipse path.

me: oh cool

nasa: apep is also the ancient egyptian deity of chaos and darkness, who ceaselessly seeks to extinguish the sun. we launch these rockets directly at the sun in the name of apep.

me: oh... cool?

if gods are kept alive by their followers then NASA is single-handedly the caretaker of SO MANY GODS

i am thinking abt this sooo muchh

Took a year to complete this quilt! Pattern is by NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg called Cupola View. Fabrics used were also designed by Karen, the collection is called Earth Views.

Earth views from the international space station

At first, I was convinced it's a stained glass panel, but it's so much more cooler.

The Crescent Earth l Apollo 17 l 1972

Comet Nishimura l Michael Jäger

(we saw the Pillars of Creation in the Opening Scene of S2 :) <3)

The James Webb Space Telescope has released new images of Jupiter.

With NASA announcing their streaming service NASA+ and also announcing it’s going to be free and also ad free, I’d just like to appreciate the lengths they go to make scientific knowledge and exploration as available as they possibly can.

There's more info at this link. Gosh I'm excited about this.

Jupiter via NASAWebb

Titan, also known as the mermaid moon, is the largest satellite of Jupiter. It is the only known moon in our solar system that has a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth where evidence of surface liquid has been found; however, the liquid on Titan is made of methane, not water. 

OCTOBER 27th, 1970 – Good Afternoon. After a long series of evaluations, both physical and psychological, that have tested the intelligence, strength, and adaptability of the astronaut candidates, NASA has narrowed the class down to the women you see before you. There was no special treatment. We expected no less of them than we do of our male astronaut candidates. And they all rose to the challenge. These women are the first to successfully complete all of NASA’s required training. And now it is my great privilege to introduce you to Tracy Stevens, Molly Cobb, Ellen Waverly, and Danielle Poole.

FOR ALL MANKIND | S01E04 – Prime Crew

for all the space ppl out there, nasa is doing a live feed of earth in space on youtube rn! 👀💫🌍

NASA’s Most Shocking Image

This image is a 1.5… *BILLION* pixel photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy.

To view the image in all its glory go here.

NASA is the coolest thing that’s ever happened.

alltogetherterrible oh gosh

I zoomed in and I was like “yeah right” while it loaded and then my jaw actually dropped 

holy shit

i mean i knew theoretically what this was supposed to look like, but i didn’t actually expect to see it

but then when i zoomed in, all the noise turned into ACTUAL STARS, that you can see individually

good job, NASA