Space Photos This Week: Meteor, Epic Iceberg, and More

Rockin' the Gold

Photograph courtesy Kris Kehe, NASA

Pictured in an electromagnetic interference test chamber at Houston's Johnson Space Center on June 2, Robonaut 2 is literally speechless, but that doesn't mean he can't communicate.

The robot, whose dexterity approaches human levels, is tweeting up a storm, with help from its handlers—and will continue doing so, in space, this fall. Developed by NASA and GM, "R2" is to report for duty in November aboard the International Space Station. There, the robot, via commands from Houston, is to take on dull or dangerous tasks.

Despite an expected hectic schedule, R2 should still have time to weigh in on everything from Star Trek to, well, Star Wars. "I idolize Data's positronic mind," R2's handlers tweeted August 10, "but C3PO is rockin' the gold!"

Published August 13, 2010

Colorful Collision

Image courtesy NASA and ESA

Galaxies collide in a colorful mishmash of images taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The composite was released August 5 by NASA's Great Observatories program.

Located about 62 million light-years from Earth, the Antennae galaxies are named after their antennae-like "arms" (not pictured), which are produced by tidal forces spawned by the collision, according to HubbleSite.

The ongoing clash began more than a hundred million years ago and has triggered the creation of millions of stars in clouds of dust and gas.

Published August 13, 2010

Irregular Galaxy

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

An irregular galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud—pictured in an image released August 9 by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)—doesn't fit into other galaxy classifications, such as "spiral" and "elliptical." (See "Eight New Neighboring Galaxies Found, Scientists Announce.")

Located about 200,000 light-years from Earth, the galaxy is named after the Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magellan, who observed it on his voyage around the world in 1519, according to the WISE website.

Published August 13, 2010

Ice Island

Image courtesy NASA

An ice chunk four times the size of Manhattan broke off of Greenland's Petermann glacier on August 5 (pictured in an image released August 10 by NASA's Earth Observatory).

Possibly the biggest glacier collapse in recorded history, the event was captured within hours by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite.

The resulting "ice island" covers a hundred square miles (260 square kilometers) and holds enough water to keep U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days, according to Andreas Muenchow, a physical ocean scientist and engineer at the University of Delaware.

Published August 13, 2010