Last year, NASA had a number of major successes, including finding liquid water on Mars and icy mountains on Pluto. These discoveries led Congress to give the organization a raise, approving a budget of $19.3 billion.

The budget for this year is actually $1.27 billion more than what the Obama administration had requested. However, it does come with some requirements. Congress is instructing NASA to use at least $55 million to construct a prototype model of a deep space habitat.

An omnibus bill passed by Congress this month directs NASA to accelerate work on a “habitation augmentation module” that could be used for future deep space missions.

The Exploration Research And Development line item in the budget received an allocation of $350 million. The funding for the habitation module will be a part of the Advanced Exploration Systems program, which is a part of the aforementioned line item.

It states that “NASA shall develop a prototype deep space habitation module within the advanced exploration systems program.” In addition, NASA will be required to provide Congress with a report within 180 days of the bill’s enactment that details how those funds are being used to create the habitation module.

Congress is looking for quick results; they want everything done by 2018. So how will NASA do this?

Well, NASA has spent much of the last year voicing a desire to get humans to Mars by the 2030s. A habitation module that sits between Earth and the moon could be used for the manned missions to Mars that NASA hopes to carry out.

Sam Scimemi, International Space Station director at NASA Headquarters, stated that he envisions testing out the habitation module and other key technologies in a year-long “shakedown cruise” in cislunar space by the late 2020s.

The agency has already funded several industry studies of habitation module concepts under its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships, or NextSTEP program.

The acronym “NASA” stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The organization has pioneered many missions to space. They even managed to get humans on the moon with a computer as powerful as your modern toaster. To many, NASA seems to be an invincible force, and in many respects that are, but at the end of the day they are no different than any other organization. I recently came across this article, which outlines some interesting facts about NASA that you might not know. Here are some of many favorite facts about the NASA.

1) NASA has a goal to get humans on Mars at some point in the 2030s.

2) Space Shuttle electronics were so outdated that nobody made them anymore. Therefore, NASA had to resort to buying spare parts on websites like eBay.

3) According to NASA estimates, the value of minerals in the asteroid belt amounts to nearly $100 billion for every human on the planet.

4) To be officially considered an astronaut by NASA you must travel at least 50 miles above Earth’s surface.

5) Cape Canaveral, Florida was chosen as a launch site for spaceships because of its proximity to the equator. This location gives it more linear velocity than any other location in the United States.

6) According to polls, most Americans believe that NASA funding accounts for roughly 20% of the national budget. However, NASA actually receives only $0.005 cents of every dollar.

7) The area code for Kennedy Space Center, and its surrounding regions, is 321. The number imitates the countdown before liftoff.

8) The toaster in your kitchen has a more powerful computer than the one used by NASA to send astronauts to the moon. It only had 64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz!

9) Lonnie Johnson, the man who invented the Super Soaker was a NASA scientist. Johnson also helped develop the Stealth Bomber.

10) NASA shows the movie Armageddon as part of its staff training. Trainees are then asked to identify as many scientific inaccuracies as they can.

11) NASA will send you a text message whenever the International Space Station passes over your location.

12) Feeling lazy? NASA will actually pay you to lay in bed for months at a time so they can study the effects of prolonged weightlessness.

13) Bill Nye the Science Guy originally wanted to be an astronaut, but NASA kept rejecting him.

14) In 2006, NASA admitted that they had accidentally recorded over the original tapes of the moon landing. Thankfully, NASA was not the only group recording. Copies found at CBS and Johnson Space Center are currently being restored.

15) NASA was sued by three men from Yemen for trespassing on Mars. The men claimed that they had inherited the planet from their ancestors thousands of years ago.

For more facts about NASA, feel free to check out this article or the video below.

It has been over 46 years since the crew for the United States landed on the moon. The date was July 20th, 1969, when Apollo 11 brought the first humans to the Moon. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first people to step foot onto the lunar surface. Since this historic day, we have not yet to see another human reach the Moon.

However, this may soon change, as Russia has announced plans to land its first cosmonauts on the Moon before 2030; Europe is also eager to take part in the mission as well.

On Tuesday, at a space and technology conference in Moscow, the head of Roscosmos Energia announced, “A manned flight to the moon and lunar landing is planned for 2029.”

Russia will be teaming up with the European Space Agency, which made history this past year when they landed the first spacecraft on a comet.

“We have an ambition to have European astronauts on the moon,” Bérengère Houdou, head of the lunar-exploration group at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Center, recently told BBC News. “There are currently discussion at international level going on for broad cooperation on how to go back to the moon.”

While they are several decades behind the United States in this area of space exploration, the mission is still exciting. Russian and Europe have expressed interest in establishing a permanent base on the moon; they have already begun taking steps to achieve this goal.

Roscosmos Energia previously announced last month that they will be sending a lander, Luna 25, to the moon’s south pole in 2014. Roscosmos is looking to investigate the lunar surface for future lunar bases.

The Luna 25 mission was actually initially proposed in 1997 but has suffered a number of delays. The help from Europe appears to be exactly what this mission needs to finally get off the ground. According to Tech Insider, construction on the spacecraft has already begun.

We have seen a reignited interest in deep-space travel, and a mission to the Moon will only help to fuel the interest in continued space exploration. This collaborative effort in space exploration is exciting to see as the world looks to take on even more dangerous missions, such as Mars.

 

The universe is vast as it is beautiful. Every day the human race pushes further into that black unknown, we come closer to understanding more about the universe. Each discovery is new and powerful, transcending our wildest imaginings, and reminds us just how small we are. Recently, a discovery made by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed another event that had never been witnessed before by human eyes.

Named for its unique structure, the Twin Jet Nebula expands outward in two directions. Massive waves of iridescent light reach away from the suns rotating at its center. Scientists have compared its body to a butterfly, outstretched wings resplendent with beautiful colors created by jets of gas escaping the suns gravitational pull in excesses of 620,000 mph.

Scientifically identified by its less catchy name, PN M2-9 is the first discovery of its kind. The unique array of lights bringing the nebula to life is a result of its aged and dying suns. As a star ages, it sheds outer layers while its mass decreases, exposing the radioactive core to the emptiness of space. The immense pouring of light and heat into the vacuum illuminates the gasses escaping the core, resulting in a prismatic show of primordial beauty.

More fascinating than the shape of the nebula, is its swirling heart. Two brother suns, trapped in one another’s gravitational pull, rotate at the center of this nebula. Throwing an irradiated cloud of energy for thousands of miles in either direction, the nebula has captured the attention of the scientific community.

Two suns orbiting each other once every hundred years, exerting gravitational forces that fling energy out in beautiful wing patterns. An incredible phenomenon occurring on a level above the natural, this universal event is unique and fascinating. Reminding us, yet again, that we’re lucky to be on this planet.