nasa

A few days, NASA's Mars rover Perseverance touched down on Mars after a six month journey to get there. Perseverance has a busy schedule on Mars with a number of firsts planned. And one of those firsts just happened: Perseverance recorded an audio clip of Mars. This is the first time ever that humans have heard the sound of another planet. Just take a second to let that sink in. Then listen to the sound of Mars in the video below (underneath the first full color photo Perseverance took). Enjoy, Earthlings. 

NASA's latest Mars rover, called Perseverance, had a successful ending to its 292.5 million-mile journey, spanning over six months, from Earth. NASA released footage of Perseverance, or Percy, hurtling towards the surface of Mars with a flimsy looking parachute. However, it landed in Jezero Crater unharmed. 

The rover has a busy schedule on Mars, with plans to execute many firsts: the first attempt to fly a helicopter on Mars, the first recordings of sound on Mars, and of course, a search for ancient life. Samples of Mars (and hopefully fossils) will be sent back to Earth in the 2030s. For now, NASA's scientists are busy celebrating Percy's triumphant landing on Mars. 

On February 18, 2021, NASA's specially built helicopter Ingenuity will land on Mars and attempt to fly. This will be the first time humans have tested flight on another planet. If you're after more science stories, check out the world's smallest chameleon. 

The world's largest solar observatory just released the sharpest ever image of a sunspot, and it's confirmed that we definitely don't want to travel to the Sun anytime soon. Let's head to the Moon instead.

A surprising number of astronauts smuggle booze into space. 

Today's top ten memes are guaranteed to get a chuckle out of you! Enjoy and check out the previous list for yesterday's picks.

Bask in the dankness of these memes! Sometimes regular memes just don't hit the same...

Enjoy this fresh new batch and check out yesterday's list here. And in case these aren't quite enough for you, there are way way more dank memes waiting for you on the Memebase website.

Don't have time to watch or fast-forward through 6 hours of filler coverage? We've grabbed the perfect shots from SpaceX and NASA's joint spacecraft launch of the Crew Dragon. This is the first commercial spacecraft in history to bring astronauts into space, and was designed by the tech giant Elon Musk with his SpaceX commercial space program. With the launch a complete success, and the window narrowing after inclement weather, the successful launch was a massive achievement for commercial space travel, and the potential is massive for scaling this to even greater heights. Next stop, Mars.

As Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley hurtle into space on the first commercial aircraft designed and now used for spaceflight to transport astronauts, you have to wonder what it looks like. Not just space, that is incredible enough. But the SpaceX Crew Dragon  is truly an amazing spectacle. From the mind of Elon Musk, this spacecraft is unlike anything we've ever seen. So take a look around at the inner workings of this incredible space craft. Maybe you'll be on board one day.

If you're looking for even more satisfying science gifs, check out these amazing hydraulic press gifs that will have you in your happy place in no time.

The Supermoon is an event that usually occurs at most 3 or 4 times in a year. Due to the Moon being at it's closet proximity to the Earth over the course of it's orbit, the Moon appears much larger and brighter than usual, often taking on a reddish hue. Take a look at some incredible pictures of the last Supermoon we will see in 2020. 

Queue Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, or for the uninformed, the epic drums and trumpets you see in any scene of significance.NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars has given us some of the most incredible photos of the planet's surface, with a 2 billion pixel capture that was broken up over multiple images. 

NASA is at it again. This time they are looking toward the Sun and examining regions of it that have not been seen up close up until now. But they're not alone either. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have joined forces to potentially change our understanding of the Sun and how it affects Earth. The goal of the 7-year mission is to launch a satellite to orbit the Sun and take pictures of the Sun's poles for the first time in history. 

Extra extra read all about it. Europa, one of Jupiter's and the solar system's most iconic celestial bodies, has been examined by NASA scientists, and the results are pretty astounding. Though in recent times Mars and exploration of the "Red Planet" has taken the spotlight and held it in the public eye. But Europa is trying to change all that. 

The Boeing Starliner capsule, which is planning to transport people to and from the International Space Station in the near future, successfully completed an abort mission - although one of it's three parachutes failed to deploy. At the time, few photos or videos were taken of the capsule's short flight. New video footage has just emerged, and we've made some sweet GIFs so you can view it's journey in GIF form. If you want to know more about the Boeing Starliner capsule, read our comprehensive article about it. Otherwise, enjoy the GIFs!

Plans are already underway for the Von Braun space hotel, a rotating space station that will orbit the Earth and house tourists and researchers. The Gateway Foundation says that it will be up and running by 2025, but we have serious doubts about that. We think you're going to have to keep your holidays Earth-bound for now. 

This story was originally told on Space. 

The astronauts up at the International Space Station are getting it all: cookies, radiation vests, and now, a cask of red wine. Unfortunately, the wine isn't for drinking: a French startup (of course it's French) called Space Cargo Unlimited wanted to see how wine ages differently in space. The wine will be sent back to Earth in a year, when experts will be able to taste the space (or not) in the red wine. Maybe space-aged wine will become a delicacy. What's next? Space cookies?