NASA is looking for new astronauts!

by Kraig Becker on

Anyone who has ever dreamed of going into space received a glimmer of hope this past week when NASA announced that they were looking for their next class of astronauts. This high profile “help wanted” ad had the dual effect of sending many of us scrambling to update our resumes, while simultaneously regressing to a point in our lives when we actually believed we could still grow-up to be an astronaut.

The actual job posting can be found online by clicking here. It provides plenty of great information for those wanting to know the details about the requirements and perks of the position. For example, the salary ranges from $64,724 to $141,715 per year, which is a bit surprising, because many of us would probably actually pay that much for an opportunity to go into orbit. The position is listed as Full Time and Permanent, but would require a move to Houston, which is probably the biggest downside of the job.

As you might expect, the position requires at least a Bachelor’s degree and three years of experience in your field, which can include technology, nursing, aviation, amongst others. Candidates will be required to pass a physical as well, and must have vision that is correctable to 20/20 in each eye. They also need to be between the heights of 62 and 75 inches, which will rule out most NBA players who are looking to pick up supplemental work during the lock-out.

The job listing also notes that prior to being hired candidates must undergo a background check and pass a drug-test as well. After all, NASA isn’t going to turn over multi-million dollar equipment to just anyone. They also note that frequent travel is required, but considering that travel involves going into space, I doubt anyone will really complain all that much. How many frequent filer miles is a trip to the International Space Station worth anyway?

When I was a kid, being an astronaut ranked right up there with ice cream taster and James Bond as the best jobs on the planet. For some reason I thought the career path to getting that job would be different than simply filling out an application and going in for an interview. Turns out, NASA hires people just in the same manner as Walmart.

For more information on the position and the application process, click here. Good luck to everyone who applies. You’re going to need it, because I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek ever and have visited the local planetarium twice.

Amazing photographic animation of Cassini’s Saturn flyby

by Sean McLachlan on


The Cassini unmanned probe to Saturn has been a resounding success. A joint project between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, it’s been studying the ringed planet since 2004. Cassini has been sending back detailed images of Saturn, its rings, and its moons and expanding our knowledge of the solar system.

Check out this amazing video made up of hundreds of thousands of Cassini photographs put one after another to recreate the flyby. There’s no CGI, no trick photography, these are all real images that, as the folks over at Tecca point out, are every bit as good as anything Hollywood can create us. This film is actually a preview of an IMAX feature currently under production by the nonprofit Outside In.

Before it got to Saturn, Cassini also flew past Venus, an asteroid, and Jupiter. I’m hoping those images will be in the movie too.

While I’m not going to be putting on my backpack and heading to Saturn anytime soon, images like this get me in the mood to travel. It’s that sense of exploration, learning about the unknown, that drives us to reach into space and see what’s out there. Cassini may be just an unmanned probe, but through the images it sends back we can all travel with it.

Space junk is out of control, scientists say

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s a dilemma faced by every adventure traveler: to find the perfect remote spot untouched by modernity, free from cell phones, television, and trash. Of course there is no such place, not even in space. In fact, the orbital detritus of modern life can be downright dangerous, scientists warn.

A new report from the National Research Council says there are so many bits of trash in orbit, ranging from defunct satellites to fragments like nuts and bolts, that they’re bumping into each other, breaking apart, and making more trash. Around 22,000 large pieces of space junk are tracked from the ground, occasionally prompting the International Space Station to maneuver out of the way, and there are hundreds of thousands of more pieces too small to be detected. It amounts to a cloud of trash surrounding the earth, as this NASA image shows.

This puts current astronauts and future space tourists in peril. With the high velocities objects achieve in orbit, it’s like having hundreds of thousands of bullets flying around the Earth.

And it’s getting worse. The BBC reports two satellites crashed in 2009 and broke apart. Also, the Chinese tested a satellite killer in 2007 that successfully smashed up its target into more than 150,000 pieces larger than a centimeter. The U.S. and Soviet Union tested similar weapons back in the 1960s and 1970s, creating their own clouds of debris.

Several manned spacecraft have been hit by space debris. Two Shuttle missions have had radiator panels in the cargo bay punctured by debris. The International Space Station and Mir have both suffered numerous impacts. Sometimes the damage is caused by natural micrometeorites.

One certain impact by space debris was in 1983 when a fleck of paint smacked into the space shuttle Challenger’s front window and left a crater, as you can see in this NASA image.

If a fleck of paint can do this to the Space Shuttle, imagine what an old rocket booster could do.

What’s next for space travel? Maybe a road trip

by Chris Owen on

While the space shuttle era officially ended early Thursday morning as Atlantis landed for the last time at Kennedy Space Center, the next chapter in American space flight has yet to be written. One vision of what’s next for space travel over the next 20 to 30 years includes an efficient network of refueling stations, communication points and satellites throughout the solar system.

“We’re closing a chapter in the history of our nation,” said astronaut Ronald Garan, a flight engineer stationed on the International Space Station. “In the future when another spacecraft docks to that hatch. . . we are going to be opening a new era and raising the flag on a new era of exploration” reported the Miami Herald.

At Purdue University, one of the most NASA-connected campuses in America, researchers are developing ways to design a galactic gas pump that can move fuel from one tank to another in zero gravity and create a network or “exploration infrastructure” across the solar system.

“The post-shuttle era is not the end of NASA space exploration, it’s just the end of shuttle missions. This is just a transition,” Purdue professor Steven Collicott told JCOnline. Collicott’s research on zero-gravity physics could play a major role in the design of futuristic refueling stations.

In this vision, 30 years from now, astronauts will routinely work throughout the solar system,
stopping at an efficient network of refueling stations, communication points and satellites while gathering samples, running robots on planets, moons and asteroids, and reporting back to Houston.

Developing a system that works for both robotic and manned missions, the “exploration infrastructure” would include outposts dedicated to communications, logistics, repair and resupply.

It does sound a bit like getting ready for a road trip though. “Play your route wisely”, “Prepare your vehicle” and “Pack the right stuff” are recommendations on Gadling’s 20 tips for surviving a summer road trip, courtesy of touring musicians.

One not on our list that NASA could add: Get a guarantee on that funding.

Flickr photo by ksgr

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Abandoned rocket factory haunts the Everglades

by Justin Delaney on


This creepy abandoned rocket factory once possessed aspirations to help send mankind into space using solid fuel rockets. Now, the graffiti splattered walls and crumbling facade tell the tale of stunted ambition. This documentary, called Space Miami, explores the story behind this abandoned rocket factory in the Florida Everglades known as Aerojet-Dade. Built in the early 1960’s, the factory tested rockets in the deepest hole ever dug in Florida – a 150 foot deep cavern. The solid fuel rockets were too large to be transported overland, so a man-made canal to the Atlantic was carved to transport the rockets by barge. All of this effort proved needless when the Apollo space mission decided to go with liquid fuel instead of the solid fuel. The plant drifted into obsolescence overnight.

In 1969, the lights were turned off, never to be turned on again.

Space Miami – Aerojet-Dade Rocket Site Documentary from Coffee and Celluloid on Vimeo.