(Credit:
Discovery)
NEW YORK--On Tuesday night, the Discovery Channel hosted a few hundred guests at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium for a preview of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, filling the audience up with cocktails called "The Liftoff" (a tequila sunrise in a rocket-like champagne glass) and then packing us all into the planetarium's theater to watch some cool retro space visuals.
The miniseries got its start when Discovery embarked upon a project to archive old NASA footage in a high-definition format as a commemoration of the agency's 50th anniversary. It evolved, following in the footsteps of last year's successful Planet Earth, into an ambitious, high-profile HD miniseries. When We Left Earth is very watchable, especially for space junkies who will dig the never-before-seen clips of astronauts. But it's less visually impressive than its terrestrial predecessor. The problem with turning grainy 1960s-era footage into high-definition is that it's still grainy 1960s-era footage.
That said, in an age when space travel only seems to make headlines when Sir Richard Branson is talking about his lofty plans to jet millionaires around among the satellites, it was pretty cool to peek into an era when NASA wasn't always brought up in the same sentence as "budget cuts." The national enthusiasm over the quest to put humans on the moon is something that we could all learn from when it comes to current scientific challenges--alternative energy, I'm looking at you.
When We Left Earth is a six-part series; Tuesday night's screening featured episode two, about the Gemini missions of the mid-1960s. It was an apt pick for the big screen, because Project Gemini was the first U.S. spaceflight initiative to feature space walks, which are always good eye candy. It was also an upbeat chapter to screen, considering Project Gemini went relatively smoothly and disaster-free, minus a (SPOILER ALERT!) moderate nail-biter when Gemini VI initially failed to launch.
It'll premiere on the evening of June 8. "Liftoff" cocktails aren't included, but you can easily make your own with some orange juice, grenadine, and Cuervo.
Space scientists and the Mars rover-loving public had quite a scare this week.
On Monday, scientists behind the solar-powered rovers Spirit and Opportunity said that they were planning to put the robots to sleep because of a NASA recommendation to trim $4 million from the program's budget. But a day later, the space agency said in a statement that neither of the robots would be shut down because of budget cuts, according to the Associated Press.
Taxpayer outcry must have been strong.
It's easy to see why: In their four years exploring the Red Planet, Spirit and Opportunity have produced scientific discoveries that have ignited the public imagination. For example, they've produced geologic evidence that water once flowed near or on the surface of Mars.
But operating rovers can be a pricey venture. Spirit and Opportunity were originally planned for missions lasting only three months, at a total cost of $820 million. Now, NASA pays about $20 million annually to keep the robots running, according to the AP.
Still, the cuts would have been a devil's bargain. NASA was trying to trim spending to cover the overrun costs of sending a new Hummer-sized rover to Mars in 2009, according to the AP. So the question remains: How will NASA shift its budget to launch its newfangled rover and keep up the twins? A request for comment from NASA was not immediately returned.
It just got a little easier to have that weightless feeling in California, if you're willing to spend $3,500.
NASA Ames Research Center, based in Silicon Valley, has teamed up with Las Vegas-based Zero Gravity (Zero-G) to host commercial flights that allow passengers to experience several minutes of weightlessness. Under the agreement, called the Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, NASA will let Zero-G park its aircraft, a modified Boeing 727-200 called G-Force One, on the Moffett airfield and take off from its runway. Under contract with NASA, the two organizations will collaborate on research and astronaut training this fall.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Zero-G will reimburse NASA for the use of the runway and support costs.
The first Zero-G flight from Ames is scheduled for this Saturday, but the flight is already sold out. Tickets on Zero-G's roughly 90-minute flight cost $3,500, according to the company. It plans to book more flights for this year. Similarly in 2006, Zero-G began flying its craft from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That year, it flew up to seven flights per week.
"We are honored to be able to fly from Moffett Field and allow our passengers the opportunity to fly like Superman and float in midair just like NASA astronauts from an actual NASA center," Zero-G Chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement.
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