Space Hotel

A Russian company, Orbital Technologies, plans to build the world's first space hotel as a commercial alternative to the International Space Station by the year 2016. The hotel will be named Commercial Space Station and will orbit at a height of some 350 kilometres above Earth. It will have room for seven guests in four cabins with incredible views. 

Passengers will be taken aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. While floating above our planet, guests will be able to watch TV and surf the internet. In the gravity free space cabins guests will have the option to sleep either vertically or horizontally. Washing will be done with wet wipes. Toilets will use flowing air to move waste through the system and waste water will be recycled and filtered along with the air.Food prepared on Earth will be freeze dried before being carried to the hotel and alcohol will be strictly prohibited. 

A five day package, not including the two day trip in both directions aboard a Soyuz rocket, will cost close to a million dollars. The Russian company Orbital Technologies is stating that the design and development of the space station is underway and it is expected to launch in 2016.  

Our lost moon

According to a new theory, our planet may have had two moons in the past, the one we have to this day and a smaller companion. A slow motion collision between the two is believed to have created the mountainous highlands on the moon's far side, by debris from the second moon. This could explain why the side of the moon facing the Earth and the side facing away have strikingly different topographies. Scientists have proposed various theories to explain this assymetry, however this new theory, the giant impact hypothesis, explains exactly this fact. 

Many experts believe a Mars sized object collided with Earth early in the solar system's history, ejecting debris that was later drawn together by gravity to form the moon. It is a belief that the second moon was also generated by the giant impact, remaining in orbit for tens of millions of years. According to this theory, the two moons collided relatively slowly. This concluded in the formation of the mountainous region on the far side of our moon. Nevertheless this is merely a hypothesis, an interesting one if your ask me.

Amazing Photos from Space

NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock, who is currently aboard the International Space Station, has shared some of the pictures he has taken from space of the world. He has shared these pictures through Twitter, which is a way of communicating with our planet, since the space station where he is located has internet access. He has currently more than 105.000 followers on Twitter. 

Italy and Malta is seen here. Lovely lights during a summer night.

Florida and South-Eastern U.S.A. in the evening. 

Eastern Mediterranean.  

The Northern lights in the distance are evident here, one of the finest nights over Europe. Paris and other French cities are clearly seen. A fog is seen over London. 

The beautiful and colourful Bahamas. Also part of the space ship is photographed here. 

The astronauts travel at a speed of 28.163 kilometres per hour (8 kilometres per second), they rotate the Earth's orbit, making one revolution every 90 minutes and watch sunsets and sunrises every 45 minutes. This means that half of the journey is in darkness. 

A beautiful Pacific Ocean island, south of Honolulu. 

Eastern Mediterranean, reflecting the sun. Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine are seen here. 

Over the Sahara desert, approaching the ancient lands and thousand years of history. 

Night view of the River Nile, stretching like a snake through Egypt to the Mediterranean. Its interesting to see how most of the lights in Egypt are surrounding the Nile.

Greece as seen from the North of the Balkan region. Athens and Thessaloniki are the two shiniest cities in this picture. Douglas quotes " Unreal feeling arises when one sees the beauty of the ancient earth from space".

Astronaut Douglas Wheelock

Earth seen from an Astronaut

This video shows how our Earth is seen from space. Dr. Justin Wilkinson explains the magnificent view found beneath him.

The known Universe

This video starts from the Himalayas and reaches the farthest corners of the Cosmos, which is believed to have a diameter of about 40 billion light years, whilst the known universe has a diameter of 13.7 billion light years, which means that we can only see and observe a fraction of the Cosmos. That is why it is maybe illogical to believe that Earth is the only planet with appropriate conditions to maintain life. That is why NASA and other bodies are trying to find a planet similar to our one. The question is what would we do if we found it?