NASA's latest batch of discovery missions was VERITAS and DAVINCI+ both of which are targeted for Venus. NASA hasn't sent a spacecraft there since 1989. And by the time these launch it'll be close to 4 decades since NASA has seriously studied Earth's nearest planetary neighbour. DAVINCI+ is built around a single atmosphere probe which will allow more photography of the Venusian surface than has been captured by all the missions to Venus so far. The mass spectrometer and other instruments will analyze the atmosphere on the way down and look for chemical clues as to the planet's history. As well as keeping an eye out for phosphine which may indicated some complex chemical processes in the atmosphere. VERITAS brings a new level of mapping capability, allowing the surface to be captures with 100 times the detail previously generated by Magellan ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zLezYh1VQ

After my family got stuck in Boston because a plane managed to reverse into another I took up an old challenge to show them how it's done. The goal is to build a stable aircraft which can turn around and land in reverse. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnwqzZ5x3do

Video Created by Scott Manley, this is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system. Earth Crossers are Red Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow All Others are Green Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video. As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner. At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths. The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days. Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) . Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifonic/dp/B0013MTJUQ/ - they're awesome guys, give them some love. Check out todays asteroid map at http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map.html Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley. If you are needing a higher quality video or images for a specific purposes - education, news or just eye candy I can supply them on a case by case basis. Thanks for the Interest! 1000 comments Over a thousand tweets http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DS_d-gs0WoUw ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw

Wood is such a traditional building material we sometimes forget that it can have exceptionally useful material properties. Some spacecraft have used wood and wood based materials in their construction, even the latest SLS rocket has large areas coated in cork to insulate it from heat. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtxYP9fLMmk