Video of the Day – Flying over Earth on the ISS

by Stephen Greenwood on

If you haven’t seen this video since its emergence on the internet in the past two days, stop whatever you’re doing, plug in your best headphones, quit your other applications (so you can watch in silky smooth HD), and full-screen this amazing compilation of moving images.

Edited by Michael König, this time-lapse was created by stitching together a series of still images shot by astronauts Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa, and the crews of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station. Shot from an altitude of 350km between August and October 2011, the images were captured at 4K resolution with NASA’s Super-Sensitive High Definition TV system.

The imaging system picks up much more light than a normal HD camera is capable of, thus capturing a vivid look at the surface of the Earth and aurora borealis that’s unlike anything humanity has seen before.

Assuming that you don’t have $1 million to book an entire Virgin Galactic flight exclusively for your family, this video should be a pleasant placeholder until you get your finances in order. Until then, leave us a comment with a link to your favorite shots from the ground! It could be our next Photo/Video of the Day.

VIDEO: Astronaut’s view of the world

by Meg Nesterov on


Need a few moments of Zen? This video from NASA‘s Johnson Space Center has seven of them, traveling over the Earth from the coast of Namibia to the Amazon Basin to capture an astronaut’s view of the world. The incredible images are narrated by Dr. Justin Wilkinson, a soothing astronaut who points out the many rivers, mountains, deserts, and other features shown on NASA’s camera from far above. You can see Utah‘s Salt Lake, Sicily‘s cloud-covered Mt. Etna; there’s even footage of Hurricane Florence, forming a perfect spiral over the Atlantic Ocean.

Sit back, put the video in full-screen mode, and start dreaming of your next travel destination. What an astronaut’s camera sees.

Space tourism celebrates tenth anniversary

by Sean McLachlan on


Space tourism is ten years old this week. On 28 April 2001 millionaire Dennis Tito became the first person to go into space as a tourist and not an astronaut or scientist.

In an interview with BBC today he talked about how thrilled he was and called his eight days being in orbit “paradise.”

While space tourism is the ultimate in high-cost adventure travel–only seven people have done it so far and Tito is said to have paid $20 million for the privilege–private companies are hoping to make it more widely available. They also want to make it more comfortable. Tito was crammed “elbow to elbow” in a Russian capsule after NASA refused to put him on one of the Space Shuttles. Not that he cared at the time. Check out this video of Dennis Tito’s arrival at the International Space Station. The guy’s euphoric!

A number of private companies are looking into commercial space travel. The most serious contender is Virgin Galactic, which has already built a spaceport and put their spaceship Enterprise through a test flight. The company hopes to push an orbital trip down to $200,000, just one percent of what Tito paid. Who knows? Maybe good old free-market competition will push the price even lower than that.

Even more ambitious is Excalibur Almaz, a company based in the Isle of Man that has bought some Russian space capsules that they’re refurbishing. They boast that they’ll offer trips around the Moon by 2015.

Best of luck folks, but I won’t be looking for a Lonely Planet Outer Space in the bookstores anytime soon.

[Photo courtesy NASA]

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Underwater suburbia planned in “Aquatica”

by Jon Bowermaster on

Dreamers have been imagining human life undersea for centuries. The most successful in turning that dream into reality have come up with musty, mobile-home-like contraptions tethered to barges or hooked by massive hoses to land where committed marine biologists toil for a week or two.

Aquanaut and bioengineer Dennis Chamberland hopes to expand upon those successes by building the equivalent of suburbs on the sea floor, a region where there is admittedly unlimited space for expansion.

With thirty years at NASA under his helmet, Chamberland’s big-picture vision is dubbed “Aquatica” and he imagines it as the first underwater settlement for “permanent human colonization.”

He’s got the credentials (Mission Commander of seven NASA underwater missions) and is credited with successfully using the ocean as a testing ground for life in space. His Advanced Space Life Support Systems, built for NASA, created safe-living underwater environments for anyone living “off-planet.”

But they were small picture settlements, home to just two to four people.His goal for the past couple decades – while writing science books and sci-fi novels in his spare time – has been to figure out how communities can successfully live underwater for long extended time.

To prove the viability of his beliefs he’s already overseen the growing of crops in controlled settings on the ocean floor and built a two man undersea “habitat” set on the ocean floor off Key Largo, Florida, which has been visited by, among other, James Cameron.

His big hopes are to see the first children born undersea and thus imagines “Aquatica” being home to schools and hospitals as well as a place for ocean research.

He also imagines that if people are living undersea they’ll be better protectors of it, essentially creating “a human colony whose primary purpose is to monitor and protect this most essential of the earth’s biomass.”

There’s got to be a first step to suburban living undersea, of course, which is expected to be launched sometime next year with the lowering to the seabed an underwater house he’s dubbed “Leviathan” … which will initially be home to four people.

Read more from Jon Bowermaster’s Adventures here.

[Flickr image via sindhi]

First craft lands at Spaceport America (Exclusive Video)

by Stephen Greenwood on

The future of travel is one step closer to taking off. Last Friday, Spaceport America officially dedicated its recently completed tarmac by welcoming two craft to land in front of a large crowd of Spaceport officials, future astronauts, and press.

Gadling was on-site to witness history as Virgin Galactic’s spaceship VSS Enterprise, carried by mothership White Knight II, made a dramatic flyover and landed on the enormous 200 ft wide by 10,000 foot long runway.

Situated under restricted airspace in the desert of New Mexico, the Spaceport is the first purpose-built commercial facility designed for vertically and horizontally launched spacecraft. The facility will serve as Virgin Galactic’s headquarters for the initial 20 years of operation, but aims to serve as a base for many types of commercial spacecraft as this new industry is formed.

For more information about Virgin Galactic’s approach to commercial spaceflight, head on over to their website. For a look at the event and interviews with Richard Branson, Governor Bill Richardson & a few future astronauts, watch our exclusive video below!