On the 24th of December 1979 the first Ariane rocket took off from the French Guyane Space Centre.

It is one of the greatest space programs so far with a 190 successful launches and only 9 failures.

Yes, Europe can tackle big projects and be a top player in high tech.

Let’s hope that the Brits (who finally get their own Space Agency just recently to replace the old one) rejoin Ariane soon.

New Scientist:  Microbes survive 30,000 years inside a salt crystal

Microbes can survive in outer space, extreme cold, saltiness and even a crash down to a planet when they hitch hike on an asteroid.

Now it has been shown that they can survive extremely long with little food – from the article:

Brian Schubert, a microbiologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and colleagues studied salt crystals in a sediment core taken from Death Valley in California. The crystals contained tiny pockets of liquid, and the team found that they could grow live colonies of archaeans from samples of it. The team dated the liquid at between 22,000 and 34,000 years old (Geology, vol 37, p 1059).

Colonies of archaeans were grown from liquid within salt crystals that was up to 34,000 years old

This is not the first time microbes have been cultured from pockets of liquid trapped inside salt; one team has reported doing so with liquid they dated as being 250 million years old. Their results were questioned, however, as the salt crystals could have dissolved and recrystallised over time, trapping modern microbes.

I think life started somewhere out there in the universe and our ancestors really came from the stars – as microbes on an asteroid!

If you can than watch this amazing video on HD on YouTube. I love space pr0n like this …

So much about the popular vote: NASA asked people to name the new Node-3 for the International Space Station. That was easy bait.

Stephen Colbert put his viewers to the task and they voted like mad for him. So he won the vote – but NASA pulled back and just named a bloody treadmill after him.

That is sooo lame.

NASA should have named the Node-3 "Colbert". I am sue that would have stirred up a lot of of good & weird PR – and NASA needs PR these days.

Would you be brave or mad enough to fly into space in a tiny capsule, hardly protected from radiation and the vacuum?

Click image for a larger view.

What an amazing image – I never get tired looking at our planet. Snapped by Apollo 11.

*thanks to edosan for sending this one*

The ATV was a very successful mission for ESA. Well done!  Maybe we can expand the program to bring not just cargo, but also Astronauts into space?

The Space Shuttle program is kinda old and no replacement is in sight. And we can’t rely on the Russians forever …

Space is the final frontier. No more. No less.

Since we lived in caves humankind was on a building rampage. We spent huge amounts of resources on building ever bigger, nicer and comfier caves.

But does a modern (single) person or a small family really need a huge house with a lot of space? Big houses mean more heating, more electricity and more building material. And more big individual houses mean wider spread cities and longer drives to work, school and shopping. Look at the typical American city – which are spread all over the countryside, they are not well planned, they don’t mix work, shopping and entertainment areas together, so long drives are normal.

Spacious individualism is expensive and eats loads of resources.

Isn’t it time for a new modesty – by combining minimalism, comfort and efficiency. We don’t need to resort to ugly skyscrapers, but we should be smarter about building our homes and cities.

Click image for a larger version.

I think the Russians built beautiful rockets. The Soyuz series is just fascinating – they really look like space rockets!

One of our first steps into outer space: Yuri Gagarin made the first trip around earth and was the first human to see our blue planet like on the photography above. A lot of firsts here …

And I like his famous sentence: “I don’t see any God up here.”

He was a great hero and propaganda item for the Soviet Union. His death was less gracious and heroic.

BBC News: Robot space truck docks with ISS (with video)

Europe’s space adventures are getting better and better. Our latest 1 billion Euro toy docked safely to the International Space Station. Well done ESA!

While some people regard this only as an oversized pizza delivery system, some ESA people already see it as Europe’s ticket to human space travel. So far ESA has to rely on the American or Russian rockets to deliver it’s Astronauts into space. It’s about time we get our own space taxi … especially since the Americans will focus on going back to the moon.

The Ariane 5 has shown it’s a reliable delivery system and capable to lifting satellites and supplies into outer space.

Compared to the Universe were are not that big. But even our home planet isn’t that big. Even our small layer of atmosphere isn’t that big. Even the amount of drinkable water and agricultural land isn’t that big.

So we should take a LOT of care to keep our tiny niche in the universe in order and clean. It will take a long time till we discover a new place as good as this one.

*Thanks to Edosan for sending me this great shot*

Click image for a bigger one.

Although the Space Shuttle is now old and obsolete technology it’s still the best spaceship humanity has to jump into space. I really hope that commercial space travel takes off soon, because government controlled Chinese, American and Russian space travel seems stuck somewhere 1968 … it’s time for some new ideas and cheaper forms of space exploration.

Thanks to Edosan for sending me this amazing picture.