NASA is set to do its first full test of the next generation Ares 1X rocket next week, even amid concerns over NASA funding. The Constellation Program’s centerpiece is supposed to be the rocket that launches Orion, the ship that will take astronauts back to the moon. Maybe. Below is a rendering of the test launch, which will just shoot Ares high into the atmosphere and then back down into the Atlantic.

Here's a single piece of news that somehow makes two older pieces of news maybe not so bad after all. So it turns out, that as NASA's LCROSS moon bomb was dropping to the lunar surface, it was Twittering back to Earth in the voice of the unexpected whale from Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy.

When the shuttle had to divert to Edwards AFB in California yesterday, this dog wasn't quite ready for the sonic boom, but his owners were. Wait for it... wait for it... wait for it...

If it weren't for stupid things like wars, schools, healthcare and roads, we could have been pouring all of our national budget into the space program and we could be living the Disney Tomorrowland future right now-- glass domed cities on the moon and Mars, three tittied alien hookers, personal spacecraft and the like. New Scientist put together a slideshow of 9 recently abandoned NASA projects that would have been cool... if we had the budget, or if the plans were thought through a little better.

At last! NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent photos of the Apollo lunar landing sites, the first images ever since the Apollo missions. Is this a good enough reason for moon landing hoax conspiracy assholes to STFU? Probably not. But the good news is that as the orbitor slowly deorbits, NASA will continue to take better and better photos. Via: Gizmodo

Recently, NASA sent a machine up to the International Space Station that converts urine to drinking water. The machine was in development for 10 years and sometimes things didn't turn out quite as planned in earlier versions...

NASA detects buried glaciers on Mars (NASA JPL)
A foul-mouthed remix of Tin Tin (Afrojacks)
A frighteningly thorough list of serial killers and their frags (Geocities)
Mister Crazy Eyes on People's Court (BestViral)
West Virginia mom accused of burning the word "wimp" into her kid's face (International Herald Tribune)
How much would it cost to resurrect a wooly mammoth? Only about $10 million (New York Times)
Man storms into Scientology office with a sword, sadly gets beat down (AP)
The world's fastest PC built in... Great Britain?

Starting yesterday, the Discovery Channel launched the first part of its 6 part series on the history of space exploration, digging deep into the vaults of NASA to remaster dozens of hours of footage in HD.

Last night at 7:53pm EST, NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander touched down on the polar surface of Mars, where it will begin digging for water. All this in the name of better understanding of extraterrestrial life and in the hopes that we may one day have one of our own standing on the surface of Mars, staring back at our tiny blue dot and its even tinier moon.

And then Delsyd sent me the picture above, which you can click on to blow up to huge size... apparently there's a new position in the NASA control room. Look down in the lower left hand corner.