Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Dig on this, boys and girls: Video of the moon crossing the Earth, taken from the Deep Impact spacecraft 31 million miles away:

 

There was a reason to do this, NASA contends, other than just because it was cool:

Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds.

“Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us,” said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A’Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact extended mission, called EPOXI. 

Well, okay, maybe. Taking a picture from 31 million miles away is a bit different from taking a picture of a planet tens of trillions of miles away, however, as nearly every extra-solar planet would be. But they’re the scientists; perhaps they know what they’re doing. And in the meantime, we get a very cool video to geek out on. 

About the Author

About Author Mobile

John Scalzi

Author

Some people call me the space cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice. And I'm all "What? Maurice? What?"
Learn More About John
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
10 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments