On The Pale Blue Dot

Launch of GPS IIF-11 on Atlas V Rocket from Cape Canaveral

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

The Apollo 13 Service Module photographed by the crew following CSM separation, April 17, 1971. Three days prior, on April 13, an oxygen tank in the Service Module ruptured due to a short circuit, causing significant damage to the spacecraft and an aborted Lunar Landing mission. Up until recently, only one photograph of the damaged service module was in widespread publication:

My astronomy professor

(via coffeeforcollege)

accurate

(via thedoubleclicks)

Astronaut Alan Bean taking his first step on the lunar surface, EVA 1, Apollo 12, November 1969

Neil Armstrong practices a moonwalk, Apollo 11, June 1969

Moon and Earth photographed at the same time from Apollo 13