Curiosity, more formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, will be attempting to land on Mars on Sunday, August 5th, at 10:31 PM PDT. They are using that time zone because the JPL Labs running the rover are based in California. I think the landing is going to be pretty exciting (referred to as the Seven Minutes of Terror by the NASA scientists behind the mission), and if you like you will be able to watch live coverage as it happens. To give you an idea of the landing process, watch either of these videos.
A few good photos and videos of cities as seen from space, photographed from the ISS. I particularly like the commentary from NASA Astronaut Don Pettit on the second video, which gives you some pointers on how to recognize specific places from orbit. He also took an awful lot of these images, and even starts off by explaining a bit about how they solved the blurring problem created by trying to take time lapse images while hurtling through the sky. This is also the man who invented the zero G coffee cup; thanks to Openculture for the heads up on this one.
I don’t have a clue what this was doing posted on CultBox, nor do I care, really. This is an amazing video, and the music to go with it was an excellent selection.
Plus that classic, the Red Shirt Boogie from a different franchise. I really enjoy a great Filk song, a normal song that a fan somewhere turned into a Sci-Fi or Fantasy song by modifying the lyrics. Each of these did a pretty nice job of it.
Happy holiday! The first is real, the second virtual, the third again is real.
Filk at its finest! From the folks who brought you Tonight I’m Frakkin You, another great Sci-Fi song parody with Move Like Jabba