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highest leap in human spaceflight in nearly 4 decades when an unmanned Orion crew capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a high stakes, high altitude test flight in early 2014.

narrated animation (see below) released by NASA depicts the planned 2014 launch of the Orion spacecraft on the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission to the highest altitude orbit reached by a spaceship intended for humans since the Apollo Moon landing Era.

launch atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster rocket

Solar Storms & Higgs Boson | SciByte 37

March 13, 2012

More Dinosaur feathers get color

Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

team of MIT grads

Apollo line of dress shirts

use phase-change materials to absorb heat from your body to cool you off when it's hot, then release it when things cool down

Jimi Crawford, who had been engineering director for the Google Books project since 2009, has signed on with Moon Express

will serve as chief technology officer and software architect for the Silicon Valley firm, which is competing in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million private race to the moon.

25 teams participating in the Google Lunar X Prize, an international challenge to land a robot on the lunar surface, have it travel at least 1,650 feet (500 meters) and send data and images back to Earth.

Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and John Glenn, were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal on November 16, 2011

Neil Armstrong

“In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.” — Neil A. Armstrong

Adjusting the lander's flight path was especially tricky; with the craft balanced on rocket thrust, changing direction required tilting the entire spacecraft slightly to one side

Armstrong privately concluded that they had a 90 percent chance of returning safely to Earth but only a 50–50 chance of pulling off a successful landing.

Under the control of the computer, the lander was heading directly for a football stadium–size crater

"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."

At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road, with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."

In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972

take care of the astronauts 24/7 in the Astronaut Crew Quarters during preflight training and leading up to all shuttle launches

they work in shifts, with additional staff called in as needed to help cook and clean.

The crew is extremely busy when they come in," Hooper said. "We could not function without all of the group's efforts to take care of the astronauts."

Space Exploration Technologies says it has signed its first commercial contract for a new rocket that will be more powerful than the one that launched the company's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station last week.

loft a satellite for the communications services company Intelsat, using a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.

Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in the world and, historically, second only to the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo missions to the moon.

Satellite

In 1965, the first commerical telephone conversation over a satellite took place over Early Bird I between America and Europe. It had capacity for 240 voice circuits or one black and white TV channel. Positioned to serve the Atlantic Ocean region, Early Bird provided commercial communications service between North America and Western Europe. It exceeded its 18 months designed in-orbit life by 2 additional years. (It was later renamed as Intelsat I.) By 1 Jul 1969, three Intelsat satellites in geostationary orbit provided full global coverage. Only 19 days after Intelsat III became operational, Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew made their historic first landing on the moon, watched by 500 million people back on Earth

theory

Billions of years ago

, a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into our young planet