NASA Month: What do You Want to Know?

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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What Do You Want to Know?

Today, if all goes according to plan, I will be visiting the awesomely fabulous Johnson Space Center! I'm thrilled to be a part of the tour group going, and cannot wait to see everything there!

So I want to know: what are some of your burning questions? I'll check this post while on tour and try to ask there--otherwise, I'll try to find answers in other ways! Just leave a question in the comments and I'll do my best to get it answered!

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This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Top Tep Things You Didn't Know

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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Top Ten Things You Didn't Know About NASA

...or maybe you did know! But I certainly didn't...here's some of the best things I've learned since researching this topic!

10. NASA is one reason why people around the world have clean water. The water filtration devices they made for astronauts revolutionized water filtration and is used by many municipalities in America, as well as developing countries around the world. (Source)

9. After retiring all the three remaining shuttles from the space shuttle program(Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour), NASA stated that the next generation of spacecraft(codenamed Orion) won't be ready until late 2014 or early 2015 and therefore U.S astronauts have to travel with the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. (Source)

8. Space shuttle Endeavour was built using spare parts from Discovery and Atlantis. (Source)

7. Enterprise was initially to be named Constitution, but fans of the TV show Star Trek ran a successful write-in campaign to change the name. (Source)

6. NASA holds one out of every 1,000 U.S. patents (Source)

5. The future space projects of NASA include setting up of a permanent functional base on the moon by 2024 and to land human beings on Mars by 2037. (Source)

4. The mission statement of NASA has been changed, since its inception in 1958, to include the mission for searching extraterrestrial life. The mission statement of NASA in its present form is - "To explore the Universe and search for life; To inspire the next generation of explorers, as only NASA can". (Source)

3. The Discovery shuttle not only launched Buzz Aldrin back into space (making him the oldest man to do so), but also launched the first female shuttle pilot and commander. (Source)

2. Mars rover Curiosity has a lasar gun that can zap a rock from 23 feet away to examine its chemical composition. (Source)

1. American astronaut Peggy Whitson holds the record for most spaceflight time logged by a woman. In two long-duration stays on the ISS, Whitson racked up 376 days in space. She has also spent the most time spacewalking among all female space fliers, performing six spacewalks on her ISS missions that took nearly 40 hours combined. (Source)

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This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Life Insurance

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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Life Insurance

I think one of the things I find most fascinating about NASA is the early history of the Space Race. The whole concept of the Space Race itself is amazing--as I mention in Shades of Earth, technology moves at an incredibly fast pace. About a hundred years ago, cars were almost unheard of, and flight had barely kicked off on the beach at Kitty Hawk. A half-century later, and we were putting a man on the moon. 

(For a great article on the top ten things you didn't know about the Space Race--including Soviet turtles and more, click here.)

Today, going into space seems like something viable for public commerce in a few more years. Virgin Galaxy is already planning commercial orbital flights. But during the Space Race...things were much different. 

One of my favorite stories about the Space Race is how Neil Armstrong and company got life insurance. Or, rather, they didn't. Going into space was a scary thing--so scary that many people were certain that the astronauts would never survive it, and no life insurance company would provide a policy for the astronauts. 

via NPR

Of course, Neil and the other astronauts had families, and they wanted to make sure their families would be provided for in the seemingly likely chance they didn't survive the trip to the moon. And, since life insurance wasn't forthcoming, the astronauts came up with a rather clever way to ensure their family's protection:

About a month before Apollo 11 was set to launch, the three astronauts entered quarantine. And, during free moments in the following weeks, each of the astronauts signed hundreds of covers [envelopes signed by the astronauts with postmarks of important dates]. 

They gave them to a friend. And on important days — the day of the launch, the day the astronauts landed on the moon — their friend got them to the post office and got them postmarked, and then distributed them to the astronauts' families.

It was life insurance in the form of autographs. 

"If they did not return from the moon, their families could sell them — to not just fund their day-to-day lives, but also fund their kids' college education and other life needs," Pearlman said.

You can read more about this inventive way the astronauts ensured their families would be protected from NPR, which covered the story last year. Currently, one of the envelopes signed by Neil is worth about $30,000--and the astronauts originally signed tens of thousands of them!  Personally, I'm just glad they weren't needed :)

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This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Poetry in Space

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

Today we have a special guest post by author Alma Alexander! A veteran science fiction writer, Alma's poetry was selected as part of a special NASA promotion. She's here to tell us all about it.

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Poetry in Space
by Alma Alexander

Back in 2002 I was an active and intensive part of a webzine that went by the name of Swans – its primary focus was mostly commentary of a political nature, but my own contributions ranged well beyond that, to thoughtful essays, once even a short story, and once, in a series of posts, a linked sequence of poems that went under the umbrella name of “Going Home”.  These were published individually, a poem at a time, by the site back in 2002 – and #4 in the cycle was entitled “Memory of Dream”. The full poem is still up on the Swans archives – you can read it here.

The poems were published, and I moved on to other things.

Then, four years later, an email was forwarded to me by the guy who runs the Swans site, an email that he had just received from someone at NASA. The email read, in full, with names redacted to protect identities:

On 30 Jan 2006 at 16:09, REDACTED@nasa.gov wrote:

> We are creating a poster honoring 13 women who wanted to become the

> first US female astronauts and would like to have part of Alma A. Hromic's "Going Home

> iv - Memories of Dreams" poem in it.   The poster is about how 13  women

> dreamed of becoming astronauts.  It includes the first graduating class

> of astronauts, as well as the first female pilot and commander of a  shuttle.

> 

> The part we want to use is:

> 

> There are times that my memories are vast,

> my knowledge greater by far

> than what could be confined

> in a single mind.

> I dream the dreams and the memories of my race -

> and I dip my grail into the waters of that old river

> and raise it brimming with wine -

> in homage,

> in love,

> in a dream that is memory,

> in memory of dream.

>

> Please let me know as soon as possible if we can use the poem.

> 

> Thanks.

When I received this, for the first incandescent moments all I could do was sit and stare. And then I screamed. And then I cried. And then, after I tapped out a permission slip and sent that back, it began to sink in for real.

NASA WANTED TO USE MY POEM.

*NASA*.

I was, at least vicariously, finally going into space.

When I gathered enough composure to form complete sentences, I wrote about this in my blog:

I could weep, from joy and from pride. 

NASA is preparing a poster commemorating the first 13 women astronauts who graduated from its program, including the first woman who was a shuttle pilot - women who looked up at the sky, and saw stars, and desired them - saw them, perhaps, with the same dreaming eyes that I have always lifted up to them. 

I just got an email requesting permission to use a fragment of one of my poems on that poster. 

I'm not sure to what purpose the poster will be put, but I feel certain that at least part of it is educational - and the thought that some girl-child's eyes will be filled with the same stars that have always stirred my own spirit, and that my words might have helped to put them there, makes me feel... oh, I don't even know how it makes me feel. It's indescribable. For a writer, I'm awfully incoherent right now. I just feel like someone has poured all those stars into my cupped hands, and let me hold them all, just for a moment - and then gave me leave to pour them all into the expectantly cupped palms of the child at my feet, the generation to come. 

I feel... grateful.

NASA commemorative poster for the Mercury 13

They sent me a copy of the poster, when it was made – and I have framed it, and it hangs in pride of place. This is one of shining moments of my life, a pinnacle, and a joy that is a new and star-bright thing every time my glance falls on that poster – the poster that commemorates the yearning of other women to go into space and to touch those stars that I myself so love, the poster that NASA made, the poster that bears words that I have written. To this day I remain barely able to believe it, I don’t know what providence guided them to Swans where they would trip over the poem they thought was perfect to encapsulate their message – but if there is a higher power out there then for sure it was working for me on the day that whoever it was that was responsible for this poster found “Going Home” and discovered something in it that resonated.

I treasure this. Of all the things I had published, it gained me, quite possibly, the least in terms of either exposure or lucre – but what it gave me in terms of pure intoxicating joy is beyond price. It is, in those terms, perhaps the most valuable thing I have ever penned.

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Alma Alexander's life so far has prepared her very well for her
chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the
maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and
in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown
small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles
in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short
story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific
Northwest of the USA (where she lives with her husband and two cats)
and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. You can find
out more about Alma on her websites (www.AlmaAlexander.org or
www.AlmaAlexander.com), her Facebook page or her blog.______________________________________

This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: An Interview with an Astronaut

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

Today we have a special guest interview from Erin Underwood, editor at Underwords Press, a small press that publishes anthologies with a special focus on young adult science fiction and also features a literary blog that explores a wider variety of genres. Today, I'm sharing an excerpt of an interview Erin did with former astronaut and scientist Dr. Robert “Bobby” Satcher, Jr. For the full interview, please go to Erin's blog here.

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Guest Interview

Erin Underwood interviewing Dr. Bobby Satcher, Jr.

For the full interview, please click here.

Photo credit: NASA

Dr. Satcher is a physician, chemical engineer, and former NASA astronaut. He was a crewmember of the STS-129 space mission, which launched out of Cape Canaveral on November 16, 2009, logging more than 259 hours in space.

Dr. Satcher received his PhD in chemical engineering from MIT and his MD from the Harvard Medical School. In addition, he has also been awarded honors for his work as a surgeon and as an engineer. He is married with two children.

Erin: We’ve all imagined what it must be like to be in space. We’ve watched the Star Wars movies and we’ve read about space in fiction, but you have actually been there. How did the reality of being in space differ from your expectations or from the experience that is usually depicted in films, television or fiction?


Dr. Satcher: It exceeded my expectations. I knew it was going to be a fantastic experience, and basically before you go, you’re relying on the stories from people who have already gone. We spend anywhere from two to four years training for a mission, and all crews that go are a mixture of people who have already gone and some first time flyers. You basically get to know each other very well. You get the reflections, the experiences, and the insights from the people who have gone before. That really shapes your expectations leading up to your flight. Nothing really reproduces it in any of the training that you go through. It is a unique experience. As I said, for me it exceeded my expectations.

It was much more fantastic than I thought it would be. The whole time you are up there it’s just…you’re discovering this whole new world with no gravity and adapting to that. Also, just the views are spectacular, looking down at the home planet, looking off into deep space. The whole thing is really an amazing experience. Up until now, there have been a little more than 500 people who have had the privilege of going into space and that number is only going to increase as time marches on. I think the more people who are able to experience it the better.

Erin: If I could do it, I would be up there. It sounds like you really do live a science fiction life–especially with your time in space and some of the medical advances that are now in place. How has science fiction enriched your life and/or your career? Do you ever feel like you’re living in a world designed by Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury?

Dr. Satcher: I never really thought about it that way. I think science fiction has been wonderful in the sense of laying out possibilities and some of those possibilities have actually been realized. People imagined certain things that we have initially done–like building a space station. I can’t tell you the author who did it, but I know this was something in science fiction literature a long time before it got realized.

The same thing is true with the space shuttle, which is a fairly radical concept for a spaceship, being that it acts as both a spaceship and as a glider once it gets back into Earth’s atmosphere.

There are other things that we’ve seen, like when you go back and look at Star Trek and some of the devices that they used–like the tricorder. There are certain companies that are trying to develop something like that now. And then there are the communicators, which look remarkably like cell phones that we’re using.

Erin: They really do. I would love it if you could develop a teleportation system. That would be fantastic.
Dr. Satcher: Yeah. I’d love to see that developed too. It would be great. One day it will happen. It just points out that imagination, of being able to come up with these concepts and it’s science fiction that at least creates the visual for us before we can have the real thing, is an essential part of the whole journey. It really captures the creativity and innovation before the science can actually catch up to it.

Erin: They were terrific. Many early science fiction writers wrote about future worlds, which now seem ordinary to us because our scientific advances. For today’s children, who might be dreaming about things that seem like they’re straight our of a science fiction novel, what advice can you give them to turn those dreams into reality?
Dr. Satcher: Pick something that you’re really interested in, and you really have to spend the time and effort going after it. I think there are a lot of distractions nowadays, and I see that with a lot of the students that I deal with. They’re sort of focused on an end goal and neglecting the importance of the process. They’re looking for the big payoff, the big discovery, the fame and the fortune, and everything that goes with it and not staying focused enough on the process.

For the full interview with Dr. Satcher, please click here.

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Erin is the editor of FUTUREDAZE, an anthology of YA science fiction featuring a diverse collection of authors. You can find out more about Erin, her work at Underwords Press, and FUTUREDAZE by exploring her website. 

FUTUREDAZE is available now in print and e-book.

______________________________________

This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, signed, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Celebration: #FollowFriday

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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#FollowFriday

One fo the things that's awesome about the world today is how accessible the world has become. 

When I was growing up, I sort of felt that astronauts (and writers!) were so far out of my reach. Now, I can pop on Twitter and talk to an astronaut orbiting the planet.

We live in the future, y'all. I may not have a jetpack yet, but this is a pretty close second!

Anyway, if you're on Twitter, here's a list of astronauts, astrophysicists, and other cool people you should follow :)

NASA Programs

@NASA

The real deal: NASA's official Twitter feed.

@NASAKennedy

Official tweets from NASA's Kennedy Space program in Florida

@NASA_Johnson

Official tweets from NASA's Johnson center in Texas.

@NASA_Hubble

The official Twitter of the Hubble Space Telescope, aka the greatest source of space eye-candy.

@NASAedu

NASA's education program's official tweets

@NASASolarSystem

NASA's Planetary Science Division: sending robots into space to explore planets.

@NASAVoyager

The official account for the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecrafts, "the longest currently-operating spacecraft in deep space."

@LunarOrbiter

The 1960s NASA Lunar Orbiter Missions are still working and sending new images and data back to Earth.

@Messenger2011

The NASA Discovery Mission to Mercury--the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

@NASA_GoddardPix

Want the best NASA pics and videos delivered to you Twitter stream? Follow these guys.

@NASA_Lunar

Their whole bio is "Moon science rocks." If you love the moon, this one's for you.

@MarsCuriosity

This is the Mars Rover, which landed on Mars last August.

@CassiniSaturn

"Cruising around Saturn, its moons and the magnificent rings"

@NASAHistory

Love to know all about the past? Check out NASA's history.

@AstrobiologyNAI

Looking for aliens? Start here.

NASA Astronauts

@TheRealBuzz

You guys. This is BUZZ ALDRIN. For reals. According to his bio, he lives on Mars, and I'm inclined to believe this is true.

@NASA_Astronauts
Follow this twitter to hear from ALL the NASA astronauts on Twitter.

@Astro_Flow

Current head of NASA Education, former astronaut who flew on the STS-120

@bethbeck

From her bio: "NASA Space Operations Outreach Manager. My job: Inspire others with the drama & magic of space. My advice: Turn off the TV. Watch the heavens unfold."

@AstroDude

NASA Astronaut

@Astro_Wheels

Astronaut, space station commander, aspiring poet.

@ZeroG_MD

Dr. Robert L. Satcher, former astronaut.

@Astro_Doug

Colonel Doug Hurley, pilot of shuttle missions STS-127/135

@Astro_Ferg

Christopher Ferguson, former astronaut currently working on the CST-100

@Astro_Clay

Clayton C. Anderson, retired astronaut currently working with NASA as a STEM Ambassador, and inventer of the Twitpic of the Day

Astrophysicists and Other Cool Scientists

@TheScienceGuy

This is Bill Nye. You know, the science guy.

@NeilTyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the coolest astrophysicist on the block.

@Astro_Pettit

Astronaut and scientist who tweets lots of space pictures!

@TomJones_astro

Astronaut, scientist, more.

International Space Station

@ISS_Research

The official twitter feed of the ISS research department--the world's laboratory in orbit.

@AstroMarshburn
Thomas H. Marshburn, NASA astronaut currently on the ISS.

@AstroCoastie
Dan Burbank, NASA astronaut currently on the ISS.

@Astro_Suni
Sunita Williams, NASA astronaut currently on the ISS.

@Cmdr_Hadfield

Commander Chris Hadfield

Astronaut for the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) program currently in orbit around Earth at the ISS and tweeting pictures he sees from the window. Seriously.

@AstroDaveMD

Canadian astronaut on the ISS.

@Astro_Soich

Currently on a long duration space flight on the ISS

@Astro_Cady

Astronaut from Baikonur, Kazakhstan currently on ISS

@AstroSamantha

Italian astronaut on the ISS; many tweets in Italian.

@Astro_Luca

Italian astronaut on the ISS; most tweets in English.

______________________________________

This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, signed, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Astronauts & Cartoons

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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Astronauts & Cartoons

I've mentioned several times before how much I love Zen Pencils. Artist Gavin Than takes famous quotes and illustrates them, adding a new dimension to the inspirational quotes. Today, I'd like to feature the ones he's illustrated by astronauts, scientists, and more. 

Carl Sagan famously said that we all have star-stuff inside us--the same elements that make up humans are also used to make up stars. This is a quote that I bring up in Shades of Earth, when Amy and Elder are trying to comprehend what it means to die.

Carl Sagan is also responsible for the famous "Pale Blue Dot" speech, when NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft turned around on it's journey in the universe to take a picture of Earth, a pale blue dot floating in the vastness of space. 

Part of a quote by Carl Sagan.
For full comic & quote, click here.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is one of my favorite scientists alive today. This quote illustrated in Zen Pencils gracefully shows one of the reasons I admire this astrophysicist. I think it has a nice parallelism to Carl Sagan's "star-stuff," and Gavin's illustration of the quote is among my favorites of his work. 

Part of a quote by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
For full comic & quote, click here.

 Chris Hadfield isn't an astronaut for NASA--he was a part of Canada's space program, CSA. He's also one of the most accessible astronauts. He has a Twitter, a YouTube channel, and is very open about his life aboard the International Space Station (including amazing pictures!). This quote is inspirational no matter what you want out of your life: be the person you want to be. 

Part of a quote by Chris Hadfield.
For full comic & quote, click here.

 And, finally, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't point out this quote by Neil Armstrong, a NASA astronaut. Another of my favorites, Neil said this quote about his trip to the moon--being, of course, the first man on the moon's surface. I find it fascinating that this man, who is literally making history and forging into the future, had a reaction of humility rather than egoism. (PS: make sure you read Gavin's biography of Neil at the end of his post!)

Part of a quote by Neil Armstrong.
For full comic & quote, click here.

I hope you do take a moment to explore Zen Pencils--not just the quotes about astronauts and more, but all his work. And take a moment to look up your favorite astronauts, and see what they have to say. 

______________________________________

This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Inspiration in the Stars & Hubble Telescope

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

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Inspiration in the Stars

I have always found the stars to be particularly inspiring. There's something about them that reminds me of hope. Perhaps it's because they seem so stable. They're always there. Unreachable, yes, inscrutable and a bit alarming--but there. 

For all my childhood, the stars were dots in the sky. They got a little closer when I got older--but I think I didn't grasp the full weight of them until the Hubble Telescope, developed by--you guessed it--NASA. 

The Hubble Telescope is a space telescope--it is literally in space, recording images sent back to Earth. In orbit around our home planet, Hubble was actually delayed by yesterday's topic, the Challenger destruction. It launched in 1990, and incorporates an amazing array of technology, lens, and more. (Source and more info.)

But while Hubble might be well-known for its lens, or its costs (estimated up to $10 billion to date), what it's really famous for is its pictures of stars, galaxies, and the wonders of the universe:

The Butterfly Nebula 

Star cluster Pismis 24 with nebula

Hubble image of dust lanes in
the elliptical galaxy Centaurus A

Of course, Hubble gave us more than close-ups of the births and deaths of stars. It showed us things about planets we never knew before. 

The Southern Aurora Borealis on Saturn.
Imagine the Aurora Borealis you can see in our own
Arctic Circle...but on Saturn.

But what I find the most awe-inspiring is the Deep Field photographs. Take a look at the photo below. 

Those dots? They're galaxies. Not stars. Not planets. Galaxies. Go outside. The stars you see (for the most part) are from our galaxy, the Milky Way. Those little dots in the picture above are all different galaxies. All the stars you see in our night sky--an uncountable number. There are as many--or more--stars in each of those galaxies. And each of those stars in each of those galaxies have the potential for planets...our solar system has eight(ish, depending on your status with Pluto). The universe is mind-boggling huge, and Hubble has captured that here is a way much greater than we've ever been able to comprehend before.  

If you ever wonder how small you are, there you go. 

(Want more eye candy? Click here.)

(Images and some captions via Wikipedia)

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This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NASA Month: Remembering the Challenger

All this month, I'm NASA! This means every weekday in March will feature a new post about NASA, and I'm hosting a giant giveaway in order to encourage people to spread the NASA love. For more information on the giveaway, check out this post.

Today we have a special guest post by author and fellow League member Mindy McGinnis! She's posting about the Challenger disaster, my earliest memory of a national tragedy.

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Remembering the Challenger

by Mindy McGinnis

I was only in kindergarten when the Challenger exploded, but I remember it clearly because it was my first experience of chaos.

When you're five, you believe that adults know everything, control everything, and can fix anything. I got off the bus on January 28, 1986 to find my mother crying, which was shocking enough on its own. The worst thing my child-brain could conceive of was that one of our pets had died, but she explained what had happened over my snack.

I remember what kind of jelly was on my PB&J. I remember what my juice box looked like. I remember that my tiny tummy folded up on itself and refused to eat anything else.

I suddenly understood that adults could die. Even worse, a teacher - a type of adult I thought of as being super-human - was just as susceptible to a random accident as anyone else. I peeked at the TV while the Challenger exploded over and over, at a complete loss to wrap my thoughts around what had happened. There was nothing to recover, no one to save. Nobody could do anything to help.

For the longest time this is what space meant to me - danger, chaos and helplessness. I couldn't believe that anyone would ever try to go into space again, after seeing the shuttle explode.

But people did... and my perception of space began to change. As I grew older it represented amazing courage and human ingenuity. It meant that there were people brave enough to strap themselves onto a rocket in the name of science, secure in the knowledge that the people who had built it were confident that it was safe.

I'm still never going to get on a shuttle, I admit. Even if that option were open to me, my fear of heights has ruled space travel out. I think the experience of seeing our planet from space would be so surreal that my mind couldn't grasp it in any case, and so I'll settle for subscribing to National Geographic...

... until we use up all our freshwater and have to go find another blue planet.

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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 10, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

NOT A DROP TO DRINK coming September 10, 2013 from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins.

______________________________________

This post is a part of the month-long celebration of NASA I'm hosting on my blog. In order to encourage people to celebrate NASA, I'm also hosting a giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive all the books in the recent Breathless Reads tour, as well as ARCs of two anthologies and a signed Breathless Reads poster:

As well as swag from NASA, courtesy of Kate @ Ex Libris:

To celebrate NASA creatively: you could blog about why you like NASA, you could reach out to an astronaut for an interview, you could make space fan art, you could sing a song about NASA, you do a vlog, you make a list of all the ways NASA rocks...any of this counts! Just celebrate NASA in some awesome way, post it online, and include the link in the Rafflecopter. I even set that part of the entry open for multiple entries, so you could blog and vlog and Facebook and tumblr and Pinterest about NASA and they all count. The only requirements: post a link back to this contest, and put the full URL of the site in the Rafflecopter. Full details here.

To enter: be sure to read the full rules and terms of the contest here. Then fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway