New Space Wallpapers

New space wallpapers have been added to www.spacewallpapers.net.

The new wallpapers are:

• Discovery Returns home
• International Space Station
• Cassiopeia A
• Hubble repair (1997)
• Saturn Rings in Radar
• Neptune Close-up
• Neptune Composite
• Neptune
• Mars Ice
• Jupiter’s Red Spot
• Jupiter
• Callisto
• Hurricane Ivan
• Io
• Earth Atmosphere
• Enceladus
• Earth Crescent
• NGC 3268
• M 106
• M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy)
• M31 (Andromeda Galaxy)
• Centaurus A

Alternatively you can view thumbnails of all the newly uploaded space wallpapers.

The site now offers a total of 395 high quality space wallpapers for download, free of charge and without any pop-ups or extra software required. The only restriction is that you may only use the wallpapers as personal desktops, and not re-distribute or print the copyrighted material.

Space Tourism

There's been a lot of information going around about the future of space tourism. It seems that the future is looking quite exciting and we might even see space tourism as the driving force behind future space exploration and the creation of better space vehicles and space stations.

Virgin Galactic is the first real commercial offering. If everything goes according to plan they will be up and running in around 2008 offering you a space flight for a mere $200,000 (US).

Although this is only the start. I'm actually quite excited about the prospects. Newer, cheaper and better space vehicles can only mean great things for the future.

Moon.google.com

For those of you who haven't come accross this yet. Google has launched moon.google.com. It works the same as Google maps, showing you the surface of the Moon.

It also has markers, depicting the landing sites of the different Apollo missions. Very useful and interesting.

For a suprise be sure to zoom in to the highest level!

Get excited about Space Exploration

As a kid I could spend hours just lying on my back looking up at the stars. I wanted to know more about them. What are they, why are they there, where are they... That’s how my love of all things space related started. Today, almost 15 years on, I’m still a self-confessed space fanatic. I’m not an astronomer or scientist. I’m just a guy with a love for space and the untold possibilities it holds.

It amazes me how ignorant people are about what goes on around them. I’ve met people that haven’t even taken the time to look at the stars in years! They couldn’t care less about space, and to them space exploration is just an immense waste of money. I can’t disagree more.

Carl Sagan once described space exploration as a “journey in humility” and that is the most apt description I’ve heard so far. Once you start exploring the universe you soon realize how unimportant we really are. There are billions of stars out there, with billions of star system, many of which might contain planets. Earth is just one pale dot amongst billions of others. How’s that for insignificance?

In learning more about our place in the universe, we ultimately learn more about ourselves, and the little piece of rock we call home. The knowledge gained from exploring space and other planets have direct, tangible benefits to Earth and humanity in general.

Just think how much damage CFC’s could have done if their use continued unchecked. Many everyday technologies also have their roots in the space program. We might not realize it, but everyone is affected by space exploration and the knowledge gained, either directly or indirectly.

People need to get interested and excited about space again. We are living in amazing times as far as space exploration goes. We are building an International Space Station, Cassini is orbiting Saturn, and there are rovers on Mars. There is so much to be excited about... yet the general public ignores many of these things.

Expand your horizons, learn something new and be prepared to be amazed. Our future is amongst the stars. Who knows what wonders we will uncover in our very own galactic backyard...

Hubble running on two gyros

Well, this is the beginning of the end for Hubble. It seems that NASA has deactivated one of Hubble's gyroscopes in an effort to prolong the usability of the telescope to 2008. Hubble was designed to make use of 3 gyros at a time with 3 in reserve. Currently there are only 3 operational gyroscopes, and with the one being deactivated it means that Hubble will now be running on only two gyroscopes.

There seems to be little impact on the quality of images, but it will now be more difficult to maneuver the telescope and to focus on certain objects.

The James Webb Telescope, Hubble's successor doesn't seem to be going too well either. The costs involved to build the JWT has risen with $ 1 billion which need to addressed. I think it would just be MUCH cheaper and better to take the risk, and send a manned space shuttle mission to repair Hubble... but it doesn't seem as if NASA quite agree with me.

Although there might be a very small possibility of a servicing mission, it's highly unlikely. The repairs to the space shuttles have set back the building of the ISS quite a lot, and that's currently the highest priority.

If Discovery's Return to Flight, and the following mission went well, the possibility would have been greater, but obviously there are still some problems with the shuttles. NASA's space shuttle facilities has also recently suffered hurricane damage. As a result the next shuttle mission, which was scheduled for March 2006, has been reassessed and no new date has been set.

Hubble's future is looking bleaker by the day. So it seems that our eye in the sky will soon be going dark. What a pity it would be, not to be able to see great Hubble images anymore.

Spacewallpapers.net Launched

Spacewallpapers.net is the newest incarnation of my space wallpaper site. The original site was started a year ago and was known as Final Frontier. After careful consideration and a bit of extra revenue I decided to get a top-level domain for the site and so Spacewallpapers.net was born.

The site offers only the best space wallpapers you can find. The wallpapers are devided into six galleries featuring planet, galaxy, nebula and space art wallpapers. They are free to download and use for personal desktops.

If you like the site please link to us and tell your friends.