Space

It's been an eventful year here at Crave, what with the discovery of Dungeons & Dragons dice from the Ptolemaic Period; the strange tail of the robotic butt; a ship that flips over on purpose, and cow lady-parts that text farmers when it's time for a booty call.

Our retrospective gallery below gives you just a small sense of the mind-bending stories we encountered in our 2012 travels. Among the stories that grabbed your attention most (as judged by traffic and reader comments), we've got jaunts to remote geeky destinations in New Mexico, a trip aboard a giant Lego spaceship, and a look at a zombie-proof safe house. … Read more

Braving Arctic temperatures and a brutal wind chill, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft roared to life and streaked smoothly into orbit today, carrying a veteran three-man crew on a two-day flight to the International Space Station.

With commander Roman Romanenko at the controls, the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft climbed away from its launching stand at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:12 a.m. ET (6:12 p.m. local time), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit.

Trailing a fiery jet of brilliant orange exhaust, the workhorse rocket arced … Read more

Going out with a bang, two small NASA probes that flew in formation to precisely map the moon's gravity field crashed into a mile-high mountainside today, slamming into the lunar surface at more than a mile per second to bring a successful $500 million mission to an abrupt end.

The "targeted impacts" were intended to eliminate even a slight chance that one of the satellites might one day fall to the surface at or near a so-called "lunar heritage site," including six where manned Apollo missions landed and more than a dozen where unmanned U.… Read more

Streaking through vacuum at a mile per second just above the cratered surface of the moon, two washing machine-size science probes that have completed their mission to map the lunar gravity field will slam into a mile-high mountainside Monday, bringing a successful $500 million mission to a kamikaze conclusion.

The twin probes, named Ebb and Flow in a student naming contest, have been flying in formation at extremely low altitude since January 1, 2012, mapping subtle changes in the moon's gravitational pull to gain insights into its internal structure.

With all of the mission's scientific objectives accomplished, the … Read more

For those of you with a dirty wit, please lend me some patience before you fly off the rails when I say that a group of NASA interns made a "Gangnam Style" parody named "NASA Johnson Style."

Wondering what's with the song name? Well, NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center houses educational programs for interns and students aspiring to progress further into the field of space science. The eclectic group of youths created a parody video that plays off Psy's "Gangam Style" in a geeky way by amusingly attempting to "inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center," says a related video description. … Read more

Isn't it about time the White House had a distraction from the fiscal cliff (whatever that is)? How about the feasibility of building a real-world Death Star?

As of today, a petition calling for the government of the United States to begin construction on a Death Star by 2016 has more than 25,000 signatures on the administration's official public suggestion page, surpassing the threshold that triggers a required response from the White House.

The petition hit the mark today, just a day before reaching its 30-day expiration date. Conveniently, petition creator "John D." of Longmont, Colo., even provided some politician-friendly talking points to promote the idea:… Read more

NASA is pretty confident the world is not going to end in the next 10 days, regardless of what the Mayan calendar or alleged rogue planet Nibiru might have to say about it.

Recently, NASA scientists gathered for a Google Hangout to debunk the multiple end-of-world theories alleged to transpire later this month. NASA even put together a YouTube video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday" clearly meant to be released on December 22, after the winter solstice doomsday the day before. … Read more

PETALUMA, Calif.--Driving along the back roads of this idyllic, easy-going Northern California town, you'd never know that behind the walls of one of the most unassuming buildings around is perhaps the best collection of geek memorabilia in the world.

Welcome to Rancho Obi-Wan, Steve Sansweet's homage to his life's passion -- "Star Wars," a non-profit museum dedicated to serving "the public through the collection, conservation, exhibition and interpretation of [the films'] memorabilia and artifacts." Formerly Lucasfilm's head of fan relations and a Los Angeles-based reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Sansweet … Read more

Did you miss out on this year's keen Orionid meteor shower or the super perigee moon? Don't fret, as a mega meteor shower this Thursday evening could appease those craving an extraterrestrial event.

Set your alarm for 11 p.m. ET on Thursday, as that's when the Geminid meteor shower peaks. It could deliver dozens (or even hundreds) of visible meteors per hour until about 3 a.m. on December 14. Keep your eyes (and scopes) toward the constellation Gemini for the best view of the shiny shower. … Read more