NASA's Year of Awesome

2012 was an amazing year for space exploration. NASA has put together a great interactive infographic showing all of their accomplishments from the Mars Curiosity Rover to the GRAIL moon exploration. To check it out, click here!

Also, check out an amazing video of how the Hubble Telescope. Jannik Hansen from Google+ puts its best:

Imagine taking a picture of an empty area of space no bigger to you than a grain of sand held out at arms' length. Through enough exposure, however, Hubble revealed that this miniscule are of space holds a multitude of galaxies never seen before. 

If you can't see the video below, click here.

We Fly High, No Lie, And You Know This

One hundred and nine years ago, the Wright Brothers set off the aeronautical revolution by making short flights with their Kitty Hawk glider.  Their arcraft wing design is the result of extremely precise wind tunnel data that gave them " the most detailed data  in the world for the design of aircraft wings".

Check out NASA's section on the Wright Brothers for more info.

Creating A Culture to Support Diversity in the Sciences

Laci Green explains it all in her own amazing way. Warning, there is some Gangnam Style involved ...

Best quote: "We need to create college environments and culture that support women in the sciences in the same way that the men are supported". I can't count the amount of women that have told me that they've felt bullied and talked down to as they've supported their scientific goals.  

If you can't see the video below, click here.

50 Years of Doing The Impossible

From verifying hunches to discovering entirely new organisms, I typically think of science as doing the impossible. NASA has had a long history of this, and they recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of successfully sending a probe to another planet. Up to this point, planets were only observed through telescopes and abstract mathematical equations. This makes it especially hard to observe planets such as Venus, which is consistently covered with clouds. Sending a probe to beam back images as well as atmospheric information helped us to further understand our neighbor as well as our own planet, as the high temperatures of Venus are potentially due to global warming on Venus.

For more information and an audio story, check out the NPR article here.

NASA/JPL/CalTech

An Animated Tribute To Our Planet

Watch the video below and marvel about how everything we know is a small part of the larger universe. For more info, check out the animation studio ORDER and read Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

via iO9