Grumpyspacekid - Where Did You Come From And What Do You Want?

been watching xfiles

blackout #40

well isn’t it

different ufos seen throughout the world 

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, let us break it down for you. Here are a few things to know this week:

1. The View from the Far Shore

The rugged shores of Pluto’s highlands come into sharp view in a newly released image from our New Horizons spacecraft. This latest view zooms in on the southeastern portion of Pluto’s great ice plains, where they border dark highlands formerly named Krun Macula.

2. Dawn’s Latest Light

Our Dawn mission has now completed more than 1,000 orbital revolutions since entering into Ceres’ gravitational grip in March 2015. The probe is healthy and performing its ambitious assignments impeccably. See what it has revealed lately HERE.

3. Counting Down

Our OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu is now entering the final preparations for its planned launch in September. In a new interview, the mission’s principal investigator reports on the final pre-flight tests happening at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

4. Deep Dive

Three successful engine maneuvers to bring the lowest part of the spacecraft’s orbit down to just 74 miles (119 km) above the surface of Mars, the MAVEN mission’s fifth deep dip campaign has begun. MAVEN is studying the planet’s atmosphere up close.

5. Storm Season

Meanwhile, other robotic Mars orbiters have revealed that a pattern of three large regional dust storms occurs with similar timing most Martian years. The seasonal pattern was detected from dust storms’ effects on atmospheric temperatures, which spacecraft have been monitoring since 1997.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

となりのトトロ · My Neighbour Totoro

feel kinda guilty but i cant wait til this one burns out. think of the freaking supernova im

NGC 6888 // Crescent Nebula, with central Wolf-Rayet Star WR 136

Humans in spaaaaace

Had this thought last night as I lay falling asleep. We have all these space-exploration-ensemble shows with a bunch of aliens each of which has some sort of super-human power, more or less. And humans are always given ~leadership~ as their special power. The ability to bring people together, to organize shit, and I always thought, like…what a shitty power. What a shitty colonial “you were a mess until we came in and saved you” power. Drives me nuts. Seems like if an alien species builds a got-damn ship that can fly through got-damn space they probably have their shit together, right? At least somewhat?

So then I figure, what is humanity got to contribute to all these super-beings? We’re just nonsense reckless critters careening through space. Seems like we’d be more trouble than we’re worth.

But what if…I mean, what if that’s us. We’re the universe’s huckleberries. We’ll run headlong into danger, and we’ll *laugh*. And what if…what if we survive and a weirdly abnormally high rate. Like any alien with two bits of math can put together that we should have wiped ourselves out a long time ago with the first set of “hold my beer, and watch this.” So what the shit, how are we still banging around the universe building shit and flying off solar ramps into the sun while doing some spaceship equivalent of an ollie while crushing beer cans on our forehead. Why. Why do we exist.

And then it hits me. We survive. We’re super good at it. Uncannily good at it. So much so that we…I mean, we actually bend probability in our favor. It’s absurd. And it totally falls flat if you actually tell us this (“Never tell me the odds,” said Solo, knowing full well that knowing the odds kills a human’s chances of survival).

So there we are. Careening around the universe. Joining alien crews because they know that with a human on board, especially a cocky human in some kind of leadership position, can warp probability to stretch success in their favor. And they can never ever tell us this. So instead they just pat our heads and tell us we’re just so good at ~leadership~ and that’s what makes humans special

But really…we’re just a bunch of space dinguses.

Now you know