NASA's New Budget [infographic]

GOOD has a good timeline of NASA’s budget over the last 50 years.

The Obama administration announced a new budget for NASA, which despite a nominal increase, cuts future programs and the prospect of more space exploration. This is a look at NASA’s budget over time, and the major missions it accomplished with that budget.

A collaboration between GOOD and Karlssonwilker.

Although, since the timeline wraps like text to keep it on one page, I think the bars that represent the different programs should stay in the same order.  And what’s with the flashing images when you view the large infographic?

The Scale of the Universe

Check out this great flash animation, The Scale of the Universe, by Fotoshop in his portfolio on NewGrounds.com.  Like one of those infinite zoom images, this flash animation lets you zoom from 1x10-35 to 9.3x1026 by dragging the scroll bar across the bottom.

Since I’m visual, that’s from 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 meters (the Plank Length) up to 930,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters (the estimated size of the universe).

Found on Forgetomori.com

Update on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:08AM by Randy

A dedicated clean-page version is available to see here: http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale-of-the-universe.php

Big Brothers: Satellites Orbiting Earth

Michael Paukner has created a great infographic, Big Brothers: Satellites Orbiting Earth.  Visually showing which countries own all of the space junk currently orbiting Earth (functional, dysfunctional and floating debris).  We apparently have Saturn-envy as we attempt to create rings around our planet.

You’ve got to feel bad for countries like Chile, who used to have a single working satellite in orbit, but the warranty ran out and it doesn’t function anymore.

View the high-resolution image on Flickr.

Bill Nye Videos on the Scale of the Solar System

Two videos from Bill Nye the Science Guy showing the size and scale of the planets and the Sun.  He may have done similar examples, but these are the two I know about.  The one above (Planets & Moon) starts at about 4:00 into the video, and the one below (Outer Space) starts at about 2:00.  "Outer Space is HUGE!"

Thanks to @DannyDougherty on Twitter for sharing!

Scale Model of the Solar System

The Scale Model of the Solar System (from phrenopolis.com) shows both the relative sizes of the planets and the Sun as well as representing the distances from the Sun on the same scale.  This image is huge (just over half a mile wide), and as you can imagine mostly black.

This page shows a scale model of the solar system, shrunken down to the point where the Sun, normally more than eight hundred thousand miles across, is the size you see it here. The planets are shown in corresponding scale. Unlike most models, which are compressed for viewing convenience, the planets here are also shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun. That makes this page rather large - on an ordinary 72 dpi monitor it's just over half a mile wide, making it possibly one of the largest pages on the web. This means you'll have to do a bit of scrolling if you want to find the planets, but don't despair. They are reasonably bright and labeled, so you can probably catch them flashing by in the blackness even if you are scrolling fairly fast.

Found on Information Aesthetics.

Probes in the Universe - cool interactive infographic

Space Probes is a very well-done interactive graphic about all of the space probes we have launched, visually placing the probes in orbit around the object they are observing.  You can move around the 3-D space with the keyboard controls, change the date range with the sliders on the bottom or go directly to a particular probe from the list on the right that is group by planet or object they are around.  When you mouse-over a particular probe you get more details and an image.

The article and the infographic are in Portuguese from Brazil, so I took the liberty of using the Google Translator for a little help.

The infographic "Space Probes" Super, produced by the team of Internet Editora Abril Jovem, took the silver medal in the category Online Malofiej, top prize in the world of computer graphics.

Thanks to Daniel for the link and a little more information:

It won Malofiej's silver medal (first place, no gold medal) this year. 

It's an infographic about all space probes launched until the date it was published (except Earth probes, which are too many). The info has information about each probe, including the organization(s) that sent it, the target planet(s) (or moons, asteroids, comets and the sun), launch date and mission details, as well as pictures for most of them. User can navigate through our Solar System using the mouse and/or keyboard. It's also possible to know the details of Mars Science Laboratory, the next NASA probe to visit the red planet. The info is in Portuguese, but anyone can understand it's features and learn a little bit about space exploration so far.

50 Years of Space Exploration - Visual Flight Map

National Geographic published this amazing flight map that shows the flight paths of all 200 space missions in the last 50 years.  A zoomable map is on the NG website, and a high-res image is available from Adam Crowe on Flickr.

Art by Sean McNaughton, National Geographic Staff, Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics.

Found on Fast Company.

Big Bang Briefly [video]

A new video on YouTube that visually tries to help explain the Big Bang and the creation of the universe.  Narrated by Dr. Janna Levin.  Maybe a little more on the visual illustration side than infographic, but still good.

"We made this video about the Big Bang because the theory is important and amazing, but often misunderstood.

This video was produced without any funding from any outside sources. It was put together with donated creative time from a group with a desire to further public cognition of science

Science has many amazing stories to tell, this is the first. The Big Bang Briefly."

 Found on VizWorld.com

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!