Because some of us need constant reminders that the earth is actually a beautiful place and not just a breeding ground for miserable, greedy assholes, here’s a short video taken from the International Space Station passing over a very stormy Africa, with the Milky Way serving as a backdrop. Just focus on taking deep breaths and watch it a few times, you’ll feel better I promise. Just relaaaaaax . Let yourself go and experience a higher plane of consciousness. Now quit your job and join my cult. No? It was worth a try! Hit the jump for the damn, maybe earth ain’t so bad after all.

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Move Over, Chicken Soup!: Eye Candy For The Soul — International Space Station Passes Over Stormy Africa

Voyager 1, best known for being named after the iffiest series in the Star Trek franchise (I assume), has left our solar system after traveling nearly 11-billion miles, becoming the first man-made object to do so. *standing around* Well?! One of you better be baking a f***ing cake. For the very first time, Voyager’s instruments have also begun to detect gusts of charged particles blowing in the opposite direction, back towards our sun. Where are these particles coming from? Whatever’s out there in the space between the stars. Interstellar space, they call it, and it’s what makes up most of our galaxy… Voyager 1 should have enough fuel and propellant to continue traveling outwards (and sending back data) until at least 2020, by which time it’ll be about 12.5 billion miles from us. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? “About those idiots that drank the Kool-Aid hoping to zoom off in the spaceship behind Hale-Bopp?” Haha, yeah. It would’ve been cooler if they’d shot themselves out of a cannon. Voyager 1 becomes first man-made object to taste galactic space [dvice] Thanks to Jester, who also doubles as the king’s food taster. OMG, you’ve got to try these mashed potatoes — they’re to die for. MWAHA MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

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Don’t Forget To Write: Voyager One Becomes First Man-Made Object To Leave The Solar System

Worst sex explanation ever. This is an hour-and-a-half interview between Stephen Colbert and famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson . There’s a lot of knowledge to be gained from watching it, so I suggest you make a pair of secret computer-viewing glasses tonight and come back to watch it at work tomorrow. Alternatively, just listen to it while you read blogs all day. But whatever you do, DON’T listen to it when you get home from work and start masturbating, or you’re gonna have a whole lot of explaining to do when your girlfriend walks in. Oh come on baby, it’s science . Like you’ve never diddled yourself watching PBS before! Hit the jump for the video, actual interview starts around 6:30.

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Stephen Colbert Interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson

Look at this picture. You know what these guys have in common? They’re all white BUT REALLY, REALLY TAN. Plus astronauts . And now NASA is hiring new ones. Want to apply with me? I need your clean urine . Here — just soak this pair of underwear and I’ll wring it out when they send me into the bathroom with a cup. NASA will recruit its next astronaut class through the federal government’s USAJobs.gov website. The class of 2009 was the first astronaut class to graduate in a new era of space flight following the final mission of the space shuttle. A new fleet of human spacecraft is in development by commercial companies to deliver crews to the International Space Station. NASA also is developing spacecraft to send humans on missions of exploration far away from our planet. These new astronauts will advance research aboard the space station to benefit life on Earth and develop the knowledge and skills needed for longer flights to explore the solar system. Man, I wanna explore the solar system. I keep having these dreams where I’m an astronaut whose nose is itching so I take off my helmet to scratch it and start suffocating. Then I wake up and have like two seconds to wrestle my roommate off me before he finishes smothering me with a pillow. Jesus, Derek, if you’re gonna try to kill me can you at least do it with pants on? I refuse to go out smothered by a naked man. NASA Kicks Off Application Process For New Astronauts [nasa] Thanks to pirhan, who, instead of applying, is gonna get facial reconstructive surgery to look like someone who did get accepted, then knock them out and take their place the day before a mission. I like the way you think.

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Totally Applying: NASA Hiring New Astronauts

Note: The high-res versions of the landing sites are HERE (Apollo 12), HERE (Apollo 14) and HERE (Apollo 17). You know how your grandma is still convinced the moon landing never happened and it was all faked by Hollywood ? She’s a smart lady, I can see where you get it from. This is a series of high-res photos from NASA showing the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites and the imprints left by humanity there. Granted they were all faked in the Photoshop building at Area 54, but they’re still fun to look at. So yeah, if you don’t like them you should probably consider take a long walk off a short pier into the sea. “Of Tranquility?!” Dude — you should f***ing blog. Hit the jump for a couple videos because videos are worth a thousand pictures or something. At least a hundred.

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You Can Even See The Tire Tracks!: NASA’s High-Res Pictures The Apollo Landing Sites

This is a series of time-lapse videos created by stitching together 14-years of high-res Hubble Space Telescope images to show the movement of stellar jets from young stars over that period. What’s a stellar jet? I’m partial to the SR-71 Blackbird! Fine, FINE — some actual astronomy: Herbig-Haro objects (HH) are small patches of nebulosity associated with newly born stars, and are formed when gas ejected by young stars collides with clouds of gas and dust nearby at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second. HH objects are transient phenomena, lasting not more than a few thousand years. They can evolve visibly over quite short timescales as they move rapidly away from their parent star into the gas clouds in interstellar space (the interstellar medium or ISM). Hubble Space Telescope observations reveal complex evolution of HH objects over a few years, as parts of them fade while others brighten as they collide with clumpy material in the interstellar medium. BOOYA — you can officially add ‘astronomer’ to the list of things you lie about being to impress girls at the bar. But you know what the best one is? NOT saying you’re the Geekologie Writer, I can tell you that right now. You’d be better off saying unemployed. Hit the jump for a bunch of short videos.

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Damn Outerspace, You Brootiful: Time-Lapse Hubble Telescope Videos Of Stellar Jets

Ever wanted to take a helium balloon to the face and talk funny ride to the edge of space? Me neither. Like I told my mechanic: add rockets or GTFO. “Bloon” is a six-person pod designed by Spanish company zero2infinity that will rise to the edge of the atmosphere, powered by a helium balloon. The cabin holds four passengers and two pilots for the three-hour flight, 36km above the earth’s surface. The flights will launch at night, so passengers can watch the sun rise over the curvature of the earth. While admiring the world from near space, in-flight information about the altitude and range of view will be displayed directly on the pod’s windows. To return to earth, the helium is vented slowly, then the balloon or sail separates from the pod, deploying a parafoil. The pod pops its airbags and is guided in for a landing. Bloon uses zero propellants, so there are no emissions or noise pollution. A trip will set you back ~$168K, making it far more temping to just tie a bunch of helium balloons to a lawn chair and do it yourself. Just don’t forget to wear a fishbowl for a helmet — there’s a lot less oxygen up there. Also: fast food drive-ins, so be sure to eat before take off. Space travel powered by helium balloon [bbcnews] Thanks to Irina, who tried catapulting herself into space but didn’t even make it past the blogosphere. That…is not very far.

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Wheee!: Balloon Rides To The Edge Of Space

Seen here giving us his best ‘meet me behind the planetarium’, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is set to host the sequel to Carl Sagan’s ‘ Cosmos ‘, entitled ‘Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey’. It will be a 13-part series airing on Fox during primetime in 2013 and produced by, who else, Seth MacFarlane. Wait, what?! The same guy producing the new ‘Flintstones’ reboot? WTFOX. According to the producers, the new series will tell “the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time. It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.” Thankfully, the series is being co-produced by the National Geographic Channel, which will show an encore of each episode the day after they air on Fox and, hopefully, keep cartoon transitions and comedic voicework to a minimum. “But that would be awesome!” Would it be? “Now that I think about it, no.” So you responded before actually thinking about it? “I guess I–” GET THAT FINGER OUT OF YOUR NOSE! Fox Orders 13-Episode Sequel To Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ Docu-Series With Seth MacFarlane Producing For 2013 Launch [deadline] Thanks to Travis, Iron Man and bb, who’re hoping Neil gets a cool spaceship cockpit mockup like Carl did in the original. Shit was dope!

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Updated ‘Cosmos’ Series w/ Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Produced By Seth MacFarlane

According to some scientists, this is photographic evidence of flowing wa-wa on Mars . How they can assume it’s water and not acidic martian urine is beyond me, but I suspect it has something to do WITH NOT ADHERING TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD. Great, you’re gonna make us look like a bunch of astrologers. A sequence of images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show many long, dark “tendrils” a few metres wide. They emerge between rocky outcrops and flow hundreds of metres down steep slopes towards the plains below. They appear on hillsides warmed by the summer sun, flow around obstacles and sometimes split or merge, but when winter returns, the tendrils fade away. This suggests that they are made of thawing mud, say the researchers. Now I know what you’re thinking: “OMG — we should bulldoze the entire mountain range and build a water park!” Haha — fret not, my little water-winged friend, I’m already two steps ahead of you. *shows off hand-painted ‘WATER SLIDES ARE TOPPLES ONLY’ sign* “Um, what’re topples?” One more shot not from directly above after the jump.

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I Smell A Slip ‘n Slide!: Flowing Water On Mars

Note: Larger version HERE in case you’re confused why it’s not a scooter. Vesta , NOT Vespa, dummy! Hey did you know we sent an orbiter to (what else?!) orbit Vesta, a prominent asteroid in the asteroid belt ? Me neither, and I like to keep up on space ! Also: women’s fashion magazines . What? We all have our vices! Today NASA unveiled the first pictures of the asteroid Vesta as seen from an orbiting spacecraft. The pictures of the not-quite-round, 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer-wide) world were sent across a distance of 117 million miles (188 million kilometers). after the Dawn orbiter’s successful weekend rendezvous. Dawn went into orbit around 1 a.m. ET Saturday, at a distance of about 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) from Vesta. The pockmarked space rock ranks as the asteroid belt’s No. 1 object in brightness, No. 2 in mass (behind the dwarf planet Ceres) and No. 3 in diameter (behind Ceres and the asteroid Pallas). Size isn’t everything: Scientists are interested in Vesta largely because it’s thought to be made of the stuff that dominated the early solar system. You hear that, ladies?! It said ’size isn’t everything’ AND THAT’S ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS. You can’t argue with scientific knowledge. Now, I expect hand-written apologies from all former lovers by morning. “HA — the Geekologie Writer has former lovers. LOL!” Okay now you’re just hurting feelings. First views of Vesta from orbit [msnbc] Thanks to Mr. Fancy, who lost his monocle and white gloves after getting wasted off 23-year old small-batch bourbon. Next time invite a brother! I mean me — next time invite me.

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First Glimpse Of Asteroid Vesta From Orbiter