China Lands On Moon, Deploys Rover

This morning China became the third nation (after the U.S. and USSR) to safely land a craft on the moon's surface, touching down in the Bay of Rainbows.

Space.com has pics of the landing and details of the mission of the robotic rover to be deployed.

China's ambitious plans for robotic and human exploration of the lunar surface comes as the nation is also expanding their claims on air and land on Earth. 

Full coverage of the historic event here.

Nearly Drowning in Outer Space

 Check out this harrowing account from astronaut Luca Parmitano about an unusual and nearly deadly accident - water filling up his space helmet while outside the International Space Station.

Read the entire account here, which details the event and reveals his steady and calm resolve to reach safety. An excerpt:

"The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision. I realise that to get over one of the antennae on my route I will have to move my body into a vertical position, also in order for my safety cable to rewind normally. At that moment, as I turn ‘upside-down’, two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose – a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can’t even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid."

Best Political Video of the Year

So very much of the talk from our leaders in government from the state to the federal level suffers a debilitating lack of vision. Instead, with the help of media reports aimed at the lowest levels, we are hearing instead about policy debates on personal behaviors and the limp campaigns for elected office.

Government and business are mired in a relentless pursuit of money - we all deserve so much more and we should be demanding it too.

To learn more about how you can join the real Progressives of the world for just one penny, go here.

50th Anniversary of Friendship 7

Celebrations - but no ticker tape parades this time - are marking the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's flight into space as he became the first American to orbit our planet.

""He is a man of boundless courage, limitless optimism and unswerving honor."

 More pictures here.

The Last Space Shuttle

The space shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station shine front and center in this amazing (and historic) photo of the two vehicles docked together as seen from a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Astronaut Paolo Nespoli snapped this view and others during the first-ever photo session of a shuttle docked at the space station.

Shuttle really isn't a great name and doesn't inspire the same way that the word 'rocket' does.

But perched here on the final hours of the U.S. Space Shuttle program, one can't dismiss the historic role this decades-long program has played, both of triumph and tragedy.

First pondered as a 'Space Plane' back in the mid-1950s, it was President Nixon who gave the final okay for deployment, and for over 30 years this first-of-its-kind ship (a re-usable spacecraft) put space travel (even though it aimed only for low-orbit work) into a nearly dismissible routine event. But two tragic accidents, one on launch and one on re-entry, highlighted that this immensely complex scientific process could never be considered mundane work.

Some major achievements the Shuttle made possible - the creation of orbiting space stations and experimental orbiting platforms, and setting up and repairing the Hubble telescope, which has given our world a stunning new perspective on our universe and all that it contains.

As one NASA space operations chief said in late June of this year - "We've gone from where we went to space, and we touched space and we came back. We now are really in the posture where we're learning to live in space and operate in space."

The aurora australis, or southern lights, shimmer beyond Endeavour's vertical fin in a 1994 long-exposure picture. Endeavour was named after the ship commanded by James Cook, the 18th-century British explorer, navigator, and astronomer. The name was chosen through a national competition involving students in U.S. elementary and secondary schools.

The Shuttle fleet has flown 134 times, as much as nine times a year, though it has been used, far, far longer than first envisioned, and a lack of direction and financing now means that for the near future, our space program will depend on other nations to carry astronauts and cargo into orbit. Where we go from here is still mostly unknown.

I'm a total space nerd (one of my earliest posts showed my geekery). And this last Shuttle flight marks the end of an era, as millions if not billions of folks in our world have lived when this program was a constant event. NASA offers a constant online update of this final flight.

Many consider the money and materials and lives it takes for space exploration a waste, but the reality is that our very nature is to explore our world and all the mysteries of our universe. The waste would be if we simply stop and believe we can't reach for the stars.