Awesome Nasa

Reid Gower has created a second installment to his highly popular NASA promotional video. We’ve heard Carl Sagan’s narration before, but it’s still a perfect fit for the majestic NASA footage here.

Thousands of pictures  – taken over a period of six weeks – were stitched together to form this time lapse video of the preparation and launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery for the STS-131 mission.

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard Carl Sagan’s brilliant “Blue Dot” speech attached to a video, but NASA really should consider using Reid Gower’s promo clip in their PR campaigns.

As the Space Shuttle program comes to an end, a team from NASA created Ascent using footage captured by cameras that monitor shuttles as they take off, at up to 60,000 frames per second.

You’ll be the really cool kid on the block if you head on over to eBay and win the auction for this rare Hasselblad, made especially for NASA, unused, and still with its original packaging.

The classic NASA documentary that chronicled the Apollo 11 launch and the adventurous America of the 1960s is now on YouTube. It’s 94 minutes-long though; you might want to get the DVD instead.

Wiley Post helped to develop the first pressure suits for high altitude flying, which eventually evolved into today’s space suits. Check out this list of some of the coolest designs ever created.

In addition to exploring strange new worlds, NASA has some mad Photoshop skillz too; these official Mission and Expedition Posters are done up like sci-fi and action movie posters.

Spend Spring Break on the fourth planet courtesy of NASA: watch the most accurate simulated flyby of Mars ever, using HiRISE data with 0.25 m resolution and no vertical exaggeration.

It’s too bad Constellation was canceled, but at least we have NASA’s Lunar Electric Rover iPhone/iPod app; at its heart is a playable LER simulator with multiple difficulty levels.

NASA’s mantra for finding extraterrestrial life has been “follow the water,” but we’re pretty sure this I’m Just As Confused As You Are t-shirt isn’t where they’d like to boldly go.

Forget NASA’s LRO imaging of the Apollo 17 landing site: this Lunar Studio t-shirt is proof enough for Capricorn One fans, moon landing hoax believers, and Elvis followers.

Sound gets seen in a big way in the awesome Atlas V launch video above; the SDO rocket breaks the sound barrier (1:50) in the middle of a sun dog, creating a visual sonic boom.

Available 4/13/10: Apollo 13 finally lands on Blu-ray for its 15th anniversary; it’ll feature 2.35:1 1080p video and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio plus a feature commentary with Ron Howard.

They can put a man on the moon, but Houston definitely has a problem when it comes to the opposite sex; NASA’s plan to approach a girl by 2018 is a total failure to launch.

Captain Barry Wilmore leads us on a comprehensive tour of the Space Station; he starts from the Soyuz, explores every ISS nook and cranny, and ends in Space Shuttle Atlantis.

An era thunders to a close with the last nighttime launch of the Space Shuttle 2/8/2010; the Endeavour carries Tranquility, a stunning seven-window viewport and NASA’s last ISS module.

The Space Station has had Internet access for less than a month but astronaut Soichi Noguchi is already beaming back tweets and twitpics of Earth from his (very high) vantage point.

NASA’s Puffin is a one-man VTOL aircraft with top speeds of 300 mph; thanks to electric motors, LiPo batteries and carbon fiber composites, it’s not only green and light but stealthy.

Don’t get burned by bad science: astronomically-correct a capella group The Chromatics sings The Sun Song, an ultra high-energy composition complete with NASA imagery.

Send a space travel buff over the moon with this Full Scale Apollo Lander; it won’t be touching down in Copernicus Crater anytime soon, but it’s a high-fidelity, 1:1 replica of the LEM.

Life is just awesomer with a soundtrack: NASA’s JSC remixes Space Shuttle Atlantis’ ascent video to eclectic music that is part BSG, part Lord of the Rings and part Lord of the Dance.

17,500 mph has never looked so graceful: Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-129) does a rendezvous pitch maneuver–a backflip–to allow ISS crew to examine its heat shield for damage.