Aerospace engineer and senior member of the technical staff at The Charles Draper Laboratory’s Human Centered Engineering Group or TCDLHCG for those pressed for time, Kevin R. Duda had this to say about space walking:

“When people go into space, they encounter weightlessness, which provides less resistance to their muscles and skeleton, causing muscle atrophy and bone loss.”

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, spoke about low gravity environments and astronauts, saying:

“Astronauts who are exposed to low gravity for long periods suffer from what we call musculoskeletal de-conditioning. This involves a 30-percent rise in muscle atrophy, a 40 percent reduction in muscle strength, as well as 1 to 2 percent loss in bone-mineral density each month.”

Having said that, Duda, Newman and a team of other researchers are working on a project to develop a new spacesuit that can help combat these “space threats” as well as combat some other similar problems such as bulk and weight.

Txchnologist.com says In the future, when astronauts prepare for EVAs also known as Extravehicular Activities, they will be able to sport new suits that are much lighter, flexible and less bulky than previous suits.

Current standard suits encapsulate users in full pressure environments that allow them to breathe fully without being exposed to the dangerous vacuum of space. However, the drawback of these current suits is their resistance to movement, which causes users to tire much quicker than they should.

The aforementioned research team led by Newman is currently combatting the current suits with a new “Squeeze Suit”. The new suits would give users a much better range of motion. The currently patented “BioSuit” is a mechanical counterpressure suit that will supply oxygen to the user’s helmet, but would elsewhere use tight bands to compress the body at certain points to counteract external pressure.

The BioSuit is constructed of a fabric made of spandex, nylon, and other plastic materials to replace compressed air, which, in turn, makes the suit more lightweight and maneuverable.

Newman commented on the the creation of the suit, saying:

“So far we have proven the technical feasibility of the BioSuit. We would need another three to five years of funding to produce a flight-worthy system.”

In addition to being used in space, these new suits could have several applications right here on Earth. Researchers say children suffering from cerebral palsy could benefit from wearing these compression suits. The “motion-control gyroscopes” could help keep a patient from moving in an otherwise unsafe manner or help them correct movements that would otherwise harm them. Duda had this to say:

“The units could be programmed to help you learn, or re-learn, specific motions.”

In case you’re unfamiliar with what exactly a Tweetup is, think of it as a real-time Q&A conducted through Twitter. NASA explains that their Tweetup “is an opportunity to meet and speak with Garan, the people behind NASA’S Twitter account and other space-exploration-minded participants.” Garan posted the announcement earlier today to his Twitter account.

If you’re not following any astronauts on your Twitter account, you’ve been missing out on one of the best uses for Twitter. Frequently, when the astronauts are in orbit, they will post incredible pictures to their account while they are up in space. I recommend following at least a few of them because you will never have a more unfiltered glimpse of what Earth and outer space look like than what they’ve shared via Twitter. Here are a few that Garan shared with his followers:

If that wasn’t enough to convince you to follow astronauts on social media – and I seriously question your ability to appreciate beauty if it wasn’t – check out Garan’s Google+ account where he has posted several stunning photos of the moon that he took from his time in orbit.

Back to the NASA Tweetup: check out the video on NASA Tweetups to hear about one lucky Tweeters experience in a past Tweetup (sorry, NASA’s picky about who shares their videos and won’t let others embed it, but go check it out anyways). One caveat, Twitterers: you must register on the Tweetup page and, even then, participants will be randomly selected from those who have signed up.

The comet is not expected to survive this close encounter, experts have said. But if it’s any consolation to Lovejoy, the comet’s last hours of existence will be well-documented for posterity. Scientists have trained a phalanx of satellite instruments on the comet, which is what’s known as a Kreutz sungrazer.

And “well-documented for posterity” it was.

In accordance to the laws of the Internet, anybody or anything that is the least bit significant will end up with a Twitter account, including these celestial players upon the cosmic stage. In fact, the two teased and conversed with each other on Twitter in the hours leading up to Lovejoy’s smoldering demise and, while it doesn’t sound quite as impressive as a “phalanx of satellite instruments,” it certainly wins for best histrionics.

And then, as if some galactic deus ex machina forgivingly nudged Lovejoy with its pivotal hand:

Lovejoy rallied! The daring comet would survive after all!

After narrowly avoiding a permanent curtain call, Lovejoy embraced its new lease on life and bid a fond farewell to its terrestrial spectators:

Crestfallen, the sun could not be reached for comment following this upheaval of events.

Allen and Rutan are in the news again following an announcement (PDF) yesterday that their newest venture, Stratolaunch Systems, was planning to design and build full-scale private spacecraft. The goal of the project is to create a delivery system that would allow safer, more flexible, and less expensive missions to space.

The backbone of the project is a mobile launch system made up of three main parts. First is a carrier aircraft, expected to be the largest aircraft ever flown, which will carry the system’s payload to an in-air launch point. The second component is a multi-stage rocket booster, which will carry the payload from the launch point into space. Finally, there will be a sophisticated integration system allowing the carrier aircraft to haul the boosters, which will weigh nearly half a million pounds, safely to their launch point.

The project has the ambitious goal of completely revolutionizing human spaceflight. The company says they want to bring airport-like functionality to space travel, and to pave the way for both commercial and government missions, eventually including human spaceflight. The in-air launch system is meant to allow for a rapid turnaround between missions and offer greater flexibility at a lower cost than is currently available with ground-based operations.

In addition to Rutan, founder of aircraft manufacturer Scaled Composites, Allen has also brought a number of former NASA personnel into Stratolaunch. The CEO of Stratolaunch is former NASA chief engineer Gary Wentz, and former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin sits on the board.

The carrier aircraft will use six 747 engines, operate from a large airport or spaceport facility (it will require 12,000 feet of runway), and have a range of 1,300 nautical miles. The company is shooting for a first flight sometime in the next five years, and will move slowly up to unmanned missions, followed by manned operations, as the safety and reliability of the system become more certain.

Edited by Michael König, and compiled using images from NASA, this time lapse fly-over of the Earth provides five minutes of childlike amazement.

The lime lapse sequences are courtesy of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, more specifically the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 operating from August to October 2011. The photographs were apparently taken with a special “low-light 4K-camera,” providing us with the stunning images of Earth as they fly past Auroras and over cities filled with light.

There are quite a few awesome elements to this video, but in my opinion, it really doesn’t get much better than the incredible images of thunderstorms rippling throughout the clouds as the cameras pass. Truly amazing:

Like I mentioned before, the images are courtesy of NASA – more specifically the Gateway to Astronaut Photography. That’s a program that hosts the most complete internet collection of pictures of the Earth from space. New photos are added to the database daily, and according to the site, it contains over 1.1 million views of the Earth (675K from the ISS).

If you want to track the locations in the video, here’s a list provided by König of the various places, in order, from which he culled images:

1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

Can you spot any distinguishable features of Earth? What do you think of the time lapse images in general? Let us know in the comments.

Ok, when I say “whizzed by your head” I mean about 202,000 miles away and when I say “narrowly escaped death” I mean that NASA scientists knew that it would miss us all along. But hey, a huge space rock flew past Earth last night? Pretty awesome, right?

And it’s even cooler when you discover just how close 202,000 miles really is in the grand scheme of things. For instance, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 239,000. So this asteroid, tagged as the size of an aircraft carrier, came between us and the Moon. It passed by Earth at its closest point around 6:30 EST.

That’s the closest that an asteroid that large has come to Earth in 35 years.

The particular asteroid, 2005 YU55, is in an orbit that regularly brings it near Earth, as well as Venus and Mars. But it hasn’t been this close in at least 200 years.

This time, NASA scientists were able to bounce radar off the asteroid to give us an image equivalent to a “celestial sonogram.”

During tracking, scientists will use the Goldstone and Arecibo antennas to bounce radio waves off the space rock. Radar echoes returned from 2005 YU55 will be collected and analyzed. NASA scientists hope to obtain images of the asteroid from Goldstone as fine as about 7 feet (2 meters) per pixel. This should reveal a wealth of detail about the asteroid’s surface features, shape, dimensions and other physical properties

They were able to capture this photo on Monday, and more detailed images are likely to emerge:

The image shows a fairly spherical asteroid – a shape that not all asteroids takes. For instance, the 1999 JMB asteroid captured in 1999 was an asymmetrical, oddly shaped object.

Here’s a visual representation of how close YU55 came on Tuesday, courtesy of NASA:

So this asteroid didn’t send us humans the way of the dinosaurs. It is a reminder, however, that there’s a ton of stuff floating around out there, any and all of which could possibly smack into our sweet little home.

The 2005 YU55 will pass close to Earth again in 2028.

[Image Courtesy IMDB]

Oh, and at the end of that you’ll get a front row seat at the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover. That rover will be investigating a certain area of Mars to check whether or not it ever offered “conditions favorable for microbial life” and if so, whether or not the area could have preserved evidence of that life.

NASA is selecting 150 lucky people to come to Florida for a “tweetup,” a meetup organized via Twitter. To register, you have to be a registered Twitter user and you also have to follow @NASA or @NASATweetup (or other NASA Twitter accounts).

NASA is no stranger to Tweetups, having organized many in the past. Previous tweetups have brought people to see shuttle launches, The World Science Festival as well as the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Registration for this experience will open at noon on Wednesday, October 5th and run until noon on Friday, October 7th. NASA will select the 150 people randomly from all the signups. Everyone else gets put on a waiting list. You can register even if you aren’t a U.S. citizen, but spots are for you and you alone. No plus 1′s and they are non-transferable.

You can follow the contest on the @NASA or @NASATweetup accounts and with the hashtag #NASATweeup. NASA says they hope to announce the winners by October 12th.

If selected, you’re going to have to find your own way there, however. But the VIP 3-day NASA experience should be enough motivation for that. If all goes according to plan, the Curiosity rover will launch at 10:21 am EST on November 25th.

He happened to be flying over the New York City area when the World Trade Center attack went down, and he decided to document the events from above. The result is some amazing photo and video documentation of what it all looked like from miles away.

NASA has put some of those photos on their site as part of a NASA Remembers September 11th tribute. The photo you see in the lead image was taken by Culbertson on the morning of 9/11. What you see is the smoke and debris rising up from ground zero, a truly heartbreaking and amazing sight.

Culbertson also documented his thoughts about witnessing 9/11 from space in a public letter, which NASA has posted in its entirety on their site. Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote on September 11th, 2001 –

The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower. How horrible…

And this is from the very next day –

It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are. And the knowledge that everything will be different than when we launched by the time we land is a little disconcerting. I have confidence in our country and in our leadership that we will do everything possible to better defend her and our families, and to bring justice for what has been done.

Culbertson talks about the experience in this NASA video. In it, you also get glimpses of the video that he recorded from the ISS on 9/11.

NASA captured other photos from high above NYC. This photo was taken the day after, by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat satellite –

“Other than the emotional impact of our country being attacked and thousands of our citizens and maybe some friends being killed, the most overwhelming feeling being where I am is one of isolation,” said astronaut Culbertson on 9/11.

I can’t even imagine what that felt like, seeing it all unfold from space.

The shuttle is caring Commander Chris Ferguson and crewmates Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim on a 12-day mission. On their trek they’ll deliver “Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module filled with more than 8,000 pounds of supplies and spare parts to sustain space station operations after the shuttles are retired”, according to the NASA YouTube page.

Are you saddened by the launch of Atlantis today? Let us know in the comments.

Below I’ve included the top three tweets about Atlantis’ launch, as according to Twitter. Two of them feature some pretty amazing images.

I’ve included the image from the tweet above below. Enjoy.

For the event, Google partnered with NASA and PBS to set up a YouTube/Google Moderator-based interview with the crew, to be emceed by Miles O’Brien in 3 days, as discussed in the video above.

The questions are already pouring in. If you’re unfamiliar with how Google Moderator works, you can submit questions and they will get either voted up or down by other users, and typically, the questions that rise to the top will be the ones asked.

There are already plenty of questions pouring. So far, as of the time of this writing, 1,906 people have submitted 1,595 questions and cast 11,788 votes.

Google has also taken the opportunity to express its love for space exploration in other ways. “To mark the occasion, we put together this video to celebrate our love for space, told with the help of products we pour our hearts into every day,” explains Google’s Tiffany Montague, going by the title Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe. “You’ll see everything from historical sky maps featured in Google Earth, to 3D buildings at Kennedy Space Center, and our salute to both the astounding achievement of the Apollo era and the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a new space race of entrepreneurial leadership.”

She also expresses the company’s aspirations to continue moving beyond Earth in its quest for data dominance. “At Google, we’re never afraid to think big, and our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful doesn’t stop at our exosphere,” she says. “The universe is full of information, and as we push the boundaries of exploration, our job will be to organize it and make it searchable.”

Perhaps a better mission statement for Google would be to “organize the Universe’s data and make it worldly accessible”.

Another side note: Google’s main campus is less than a mile away from the NASA Ames Research Center.

The Endeavour’s launch lasted a reported 12 seconds.