Here at Neatorama, we often feature the work of artist Brock Davis. His genius lies in seeing hidden forms in ordinary objects, like a treehouse in a sprig of broccoli or a bearskin rug in a gummi bear. One of Davis’s latest projects depicts famous explosions using cauliflower and skewers. Pictured above is the tragic destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. His other pieces in the set show the wreck of the Hindenburg and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Link -via @JosephHolmes

Have you ever wanted to build your own space ship or space station but didn’t know how? Well now you can with these helpful blueprints from NASA. Perhaps someone will be able to make a very accurate scale replica of some of these space vehicles, that should make for an interesting trip to Home Depot.

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Hard to believe that the final Space Shuttle mission is over and the USA doesn’t have a clear follow up to the shuttle program. However the final shuttle astronauts are being honored in New York City this week, most notably by Mayor Bloomberg.

It wasn’t quite a tickertape parade, but the final space shuttle crew was honored by New York City today (Aug. 17) with a proclamation by the mayor.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared today “STS-135 Atlantis Crew Day” by presenting the four STS-135 astronauts with a plaque during a ceremony at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.

The astronauts landed July 21 on NASA’s 135th and final space shuttle mission, closing out the 30-year program. Now the crew is on a whirlwind tour of New York City that included a stop this morning to meet Sesame Street Muppet Elmo and greet the public at an outdoor science fair.

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The recent drought in Texas has caused water levels to drop across the state, which has revealed a piece of American history resting on the bottom of lake. In the East Texas city of Nacogdoches, NASA has confirmed that a part of Columbia has been discovered. The piece of debris is a power reactant storage and distribution system (PRSD), which looks like a badly battered disco ball.

According to Lisa Malone, a NASA spokeswoman the PRSD is four feet in diameter, and was used on the Space Shuttle as a tank to provide power and water during missions. NASA is looking into how to recover the object.

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You can put yourself into the experience of witnessing the final mission of the space shuttle program with the shuttle Atlantis in a multimedia post at the Neatorama Spotlight Blog. Read about what it was like to be there at liftoff. Listen to the roar of the shuttle and the crowd that saw it launch. See a collection of beautiful photographs covering the preparations, the launch, and the final landing. It’s all there in Neatorama’s tribute to the ending of the space shuttle program. Link

The space shuttle Atlantis ended its final mission today when it landed in Florida just before 6AM ET. This photograph, showing the shuttle’s final descent path, was taken this morning by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. See a much larger and more impressive photo at NASA’s website. Link -Thanks, Ned!

Chris Bray and his father were able to watch the launch of both the first and the last space shuttle missions, thirty years apart. For the last one, they decided to recreate their poses from 1981. Link -via DVICE | Photo used under Creative Commons license

With the final launch of NASA’s space shuttle program scheduled for Friday, it’s the perfect time to do a little shuttle retrospective. Over on mental_floss, Miss Cellania talks about the beginnings of the 35-year space shuttle program and what NASA has to do with Star Trek.

As soon as Apollo 11 delivered astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA was asked to develop a new space program that would be more immediately useful and (most importantly) more cost-efficient. The Apollo program continued through mission 17 in 1972, but meanwhile engineers were developing a reusable spacecraft. It was a totally new concept, a vehicle tough enough to go into space, complete mission after mission, and land on earth with such little damage that it could be sent up again. We didn’t see the first space shuttle until 1976. It was called Enterprise.

Link via MissCellania

Owen Silverwood launches model NASA spacecraft in tanks of water to recreate the effect of billowing clouds of rocket exhaust. The space shuttle shot at the link is particularly glorious. Link -via Fubiz (Google Translate)

The app in question is called SpaceLab for iOS (opens iTunes) and might be used in future space missions for some navigation tasks. However, the company notes that on the shuttle mission, the iPhones will not be used for critical navigation. There will be four experiments done with the iPhone and the instructions for the experiments are integrated into the app.

The experiments will include a “limb tracker” that looks at the Earth’s limb (or curved edge) to determine the altitude of the iPhone. A sensor calibration tool will be tested that allows of the calibration of the sensors and gyroscope of the iPhone in space. The app will also be tested to determine latitude and longitude based on photos of the Earth and to test the effects of space radiation on the iPhone RAM.

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This past Saturday Pope Benedict became the first pope to call astronauts in space. He talked to the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour along with those at the International Space Station.

From space, “I think it must be obvious to you that we all live together on this earth and how absurd it is that we fight and kill,” said Benedict, speaking from the Vatican to the International Space Station, where the space shuttle Endeavour docked Wednesday during its final mission.

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I like websites that perform one function well. This website answers the question of how many people are in space at any given moment and where (on the International Space Station, aboard the Space Shuttle, etc.)  Link

After they’re done getting a space shuttle into the upper atmosphere, the solid rocket boosters drop off and fall into the ocean. They’re recovered by the NASA vessels Liberty Star and Freedom Star and refurbished for additional use. This video shows how it’s done. It’s rather long, so let me point out some highlights:

0:28 — Dolphins!
1:41 — Liberty Star arrives at the location of a rocket.
2:30 — Divers attach towing rig to the rocket.
3:20 — Liberty Star begins towing the rocket.
5:00 — Freedom Star gets underway.
5:45 — Freedom Star crew watches shuttle liftoff.
6:25 — Freedom Star arrives at the location of the other rocket.
7:40 — Rocket flops over in the water.
8:05 — Freedom Star enters the harbor.

via Geekosystem

German astronomer Jens Hackmann shot this picture of what is thought to be the last waste water dump from the space shuttle Discovery on March 8 before re-entry. This waste water would, of course, include astronaut urine:

“When observing ISS and space shuttle Discovery with unaided eye, there was nothing special for me,” Hackmann wrote in the caption of his video on YouTube. “But when I examined the video clip I wondered what that tail on Discovery was…Then I read in the internet about other sights.”

Such water dumps are a usual event, allowing the spaceship to unload its dirty water and urine before returning to Earth. A similar disposal gave skywatchers a nice view during the shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission in September, 2009 as well.

Link via Alphecca

Sure, we’ve all seen pictures of a space shuttle docking. But this one was taken from Earth using a fairly ordinary telescope guided by hand:

This remarkable picture was taken by Rob Bullen on Saturday February 26 from the UK, using an 8.5? telescope. I’ll note that’s relatively small as telescopes go! But the ISS is now over 100 meters long, and if it’s directly overhead (that is, the closest it can be to an observer on the ground) it appears large enough to easily look elongated in binoculars — in fact, it would be big enough to look elongated to someone with good eyesight and no aid at all*! Still, images like this are difficult to obtain even with a carefully guided telescope equipped with a video camera.

Oh — did I mention that Rob hand-guided his telescope for this shot?

Link via Popular Science

But what really makes a shuttle station a bad idea is the lack of amenities. The shuttles don’t have room for all the exercise equipment that astronauts need to stave off rapid bone and muscle loss. They don’t have individual bedroom compartments like the ISS does; to get some shuteye, astronauts instead zip themselves in sleeping bags and Velcro themselves to a wall. They don’t even have a garbage chute. “They’d have to figure out some way to bundle up waste—human waste included—and toss it out a hatch,” Curie says. “And because there isn’t a launcher to shoot the waste into the atmosphere to burn up, it would just float and collect around the outside of the station.”

Link | Photo: NASA

The robot — I wonder if they’ll call it R2? — is an experiment to test how such devices can help astronauts in the future*. Pictured on the right (where it can be seen curling a 20 pound dumbbell, ostensibly so it can more efficiently kill Sarah Connor), it’ll be mounted on a fixed pedestal in the new module. Eventually, future models will be mobile, allowing them to do work on the station itself, both inside and outside. GM is partnering with NASA on Robonaut, so that the new technologies may be applied in the automotive industry as well.

R2 has his own Twitter feed, too. Get more on Discovery’s last launch at Bad Astronomy. Link

Don’t let my button-happy son see this! Dark Roasted Blend has a very neat photo gallery of Mega Dashboards and Instrument Panels. This one above is from the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Believe it or not, the dashboard above was "simplified" in an March 2000 update to the space shuttle.

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The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up.

That said, an astronaut so close to the sun is way, way out of position. “The technology in our current space suits really isn’t designed to withstand deep space,” says Ralph McNutt, an engineer working on the heat shielding for NASA’s Messenger, a new robotic Mercury probe. The standard space suit will keep an astronaut relatively comfortable at external temperatures reaching up to 248°. Heat coming off the sun dissipates over distance, but a person drifting in space would begin encountering that kind of heat (the five-yard line) some three million miles from the sun. “It would then be a matter of time before the astronaut died,” McNutt says.

The space shuttle, however, has greater heat resistance than a spacesuit, so it could get to the two-yard line before cooking its crew.

Link | Photo: the Sun seen from Skylab, courtesy of NASA

Face in Space follows a long tradition of spacecraft carrying personal touches out of Earth’s gravity well. Since 1997, shuttle missions have carried elementary school students’ signatures as part of an outreach project called Student Signatures in Space. The Cassini spacecraft brought a disk of signatures into orbit around Saturn. The Phoenix Mars Lander took a DVD to Mars’ north pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a microchip to the moon. And the exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope took a DVD full of names and messages to ET into orbit.

The Voyager I spacecraft’s cargo was even more intimate: It carried a phonograph record containing recordings of a kiss, a mother’s first words to her child and Carl Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan’s brainwaves, among other Earthly sounds.

Face in Space | Wired Science piece

This might very well be the coolest time-lapse video I’ve ever seen. Move over Koyaanisqatsi - you’ve got company from NASA!

Link via YouTube (thanks PhamPants for the tip!)

When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in December 2008 put out the call seeking buyers at museums, schools and elsewhere, the agency received about 20 inquiries. An agency spokesman, Mike Curie, said he expected more interest, especially with the discount.

“We’re confident that we’ll get other takers,” Mr. Curie said Friday.

The Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The Atlantis and the Endeavour are up for grabs. It is possible that the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, will also be available. The Enterprise is currently at the Smithsonian.

Link via Instapundit | Photo: NASA

Link.

Astrophotographer Thierry Legault took what is probably one of the most incredible photographs of the Sun. What’s the big deal about the big yellow ball? Look closely:

OK, so you look at it and say, “So what? It’s a picture of the quiet Sun seen in overcast conditions. Big deal!”

Ah, but a big deal it is. See those spots in the lower left quadrant of our nearest star? Those aren’t sunspots… here, let me show you what those are:
Yes, that is in fact the Space Shuttle Atlantis silhouetted against the Sun. But wait, there’s something else, isn’t there. What’s that spot below the Shuttle?

That, me droogs, is the Hubble Space Telescope. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Holy Haleakala!

Link – via google

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrsmojorisin.

Two Japanese LEGOsmiths used a whopping 65,000 bricks and 1,590 man hours to complete the stunning diorama, which even simulates a launch with flashing lights under the boosters and a vocal countdown. The only thing it doesn’t do is lift off.

Part of the “Nasu Space Center,” it appeared as a scene in Nasu Highland Park, an amusement park in Japan.

Link (with video). -via Digg

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	The View From the Intl Space Station Window This short but fantastic video clip is of the view from the Space Shuttle Endeavour's left window looking at the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) of the International Space Shuttle. Link
	Ying-Yang Twins on Cribs - Translated Does anyone understand what rappers Kaine and D-Roc of the Ying-Yang Twins (shouldn't that be Yin Yang?) are talking about. So thankfully, the guys over at Tasty Booze blog stepped in to translate. While you laugh at their expense, keep this in mind: they probably make more in a week than we all do in a year. Sad, ain't it? Link While watching this, I had an epiphany about MTV Cribs - the jerky camera work is to distract you from how bad the show actually is! Either that or this is how the younger generation actually see the world, and if so God saves us all. If you liked that, then you'll love this: Freestyle Rap Battle Translated into Plain English
	Men in Black Bloopers I know that it's been a while since MIB hit the silver screen - but this blooper outtakes are just as funny as the film itself. What a neat blast from the past: Link
	A Ventriloquist and Her Monkey This one is NSFW (strong language), but it's very funny: here's British actress and comedian Nina Conti performing ventriloquism with her sarcastic and profane puppet monkey Monk. Link (Interestingly, YouTube removed a video "due to terms of use violation" from her own website - what's up with that?)
	Iron Man vs Bruce Lee Who will win? Iron man or the Little Dragon? Regardless of who wins, one thing is for sure: French Canadian filmmaker Patrick Boivin, the man behind this short clip, sure knows how to make an excellent stop motion animation! Link

For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.