inothernews:

ELECTRIC BLUE   This new “Blue Marble” image of Earth was produced by the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP. The composite image was assembled from image data captured from a number of swaths of Earth’s surface on Jan. 4 and is the best-known high-resolution images of our planet.  (Photo: NASA / NOAA / Suomi VPP / VIRS / Norman Kuring via MSNBC.com)

bl0ssom:

Manam Volcano, Papua New Guinea by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

inothernews:

Four NASA astronauts from the final space shuttle mission tonight presented host Stephen Colbert with a pretty fucking cool artifact — a “frangible nut.”  As Commander Chris Ferguson explained,

The space shuttle is actually held to the launch pad with eight very large nuts. …At the moment that the solid rocket boosters — the big  white ones — fire, there’s charges in either side of that nut that will split that nut in half and actually release the space shuttle from the state of Florida (!!!) so that it may ascend in(to) orbit.

Stephen then snarked, “As if launching a rocket were not phallic enough, you literally bust a nut when you go into space.”

Learn something new every day!  Also, may your nuts never be frangible.

inothernews:

Stephen Colbert, offering (Tang) libations “for my homies at NASA.”

mothernaturenetwork:

Dark alien planet discovered by NASA
Scientists are unsure why the planet is blacker than coal, but believe it could be a chemical they ‘haven’t even thought of yet.’