This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. Image taken: Feb. 10, 2010.

Credit:NASA

TV-viewers around the world will be treated to an unprecedented live tour of the $100 billion International Space Station next month when the National Geographic Channel airs a two-hour special from the astronauts’ orbital home.

During the “Live from Space” TVevent, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata — two of the six spaceflyers currently living on the station — will show how they stay fit, conduct science experiments and even use the toilet in microgravity. They’ll also talk to viewers via videochat, according to Nat Geo. Meanwhile, veteran NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who is perhaps most famous for his spacewalking repairs the Hubble Space Telescope, will be partaking in the two-hour event, live from Houston.

via Live from Space! National Geographic, NASA Team Up for Cosmic TV Event | Space.com.

Annotated evening-sky view taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the Earth and Earth’s moon – enlarged in inset – as seen on Jan. 31, 2014, or Sol 529 shortly after sunset at the Dingo Gap sand dune. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU

18 months into her mission to discover a habitable zone on the Red Planet, NASA’s Curiosity rover has at last looked back to the inhabited zone of all humanity and snapped her 1st image of all 7 Billion Earthlings living on the Home Planet.

“Look Back in Wonder… My first picture of Earth from the surface of Mars,” tweeted Curiosity today.

You are there! See yourselves in the spectacular imagery from the Red Planet’s surface and inside Gale Crater – above and below.

Car sized Curiosity captured the evocative image of Earth as an evening star in the Martian sky just days ago on Jan. 31, 2014, or Sol 529, some 80 minutes after sunset.

And what’s more is that the evening sky view even includes the Earth’s Moon!
Earth shines brilliantly as the brightest beacon in the Martian twilight sky view taken from the rovers current location at the edge of a sand dune dubbed the ‘Dingo Gap.’
“A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright “evening stars,” said NASA in a statement issued today.

via You are Here! Curiosity’s 1st Photo of Home Planet Earth from Mars.

A dramatic, fresh impact crater on Mars dominates this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

A NASA spacecraft has snapped a stunning photo of a fresh Martian crater that was gouged out of the Red Planet just in the last three years or so.

The new photo by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was captured by the probe’s powerful HiRISE camera on Nov. 19, though the space agency unveiled the image on Wednesday (Feb. 5). Scientists know the feature formed sometime between July 2010 and May 2012, because other MRO observations show big changes in the area between those two dates.

“The crater spans approximately 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the new image. “Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image, due to removal of the reddish dust in that area.”

via Fresh Crater on Mars Spotted by NASA Spacecraft (Photo) | Space.com.