From an altitude of 218 miles (350 km) the cameras aboard the International Space Station look back at our planet as Hurricane Earl passes underneath as a Category 4 storm northeast of Puerto Rico near the northern Antilles islands. The Russian Progress 37 cargo craft and the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft in the foreground.

NASA’s Chief scientist of Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. Jim Garvin explains why exploring the inner solar system is important gives us a better understanding of the history and future of such exploration. Video is from last month, the 14th of July and was filmed in front of an audience of summer interns and co-op students.

The DigitalGlobe imaging company has continued to snap an array of unique and interesting looking images as viewed from their fleet of satellites orbiting the earth. On August 17th one of those satellites viewed this Algae Bloom off the San Diego California coastline and more specifically the seaside resort community of La Jolla.

Timelapse video showing NASA’s Goddard’s Laser Ranging Facility at the Goddard Space Flight Center In Maryland as they keep track of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with by shooting lasers at it. This is done 28 times per second, as the orbiter moves in an orbit around the moon at 3,600 mph. LRO which has been orbiting the moon since July of 2009, continues to orbit the moon alone as it furthers our understanding of our closest celestial neighbor.

The video below shows our sun from May 27th to August 26th as imaged by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft.

Video detailing further information on the goals behind the NASA/GM developed Robonaut R2′s STS-133 mission to the International Space Station. With insight of what a robot should be by Star Wars actor Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) towards the end of the video.

Amazing video showing all the known asteroids discovered from 1980 to 2010. Information is from asteroid database ‘astorb.dat’ created by American astronomer Ted Bowell of Lowell Observatory and and associates.

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You’ll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990′s we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you’ll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that’s tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we’re running out of undiscovered objects.

The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season has been up to now fairly quiet, with only one hurricane and two tropical storms of the three named storms before the middle of August. Things have recently become very active, with two named storms and the low potential of another off of Africa in 24 hours. This according to the National Hurricane Center, which should be your first source of information on the latest tropical cyclone news in the Pacific and Atlantic.

Below is an image of the strongest of the two storms, Hurricane Danielle. This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite at 12:50 AST (16:50 UTC) earlier today. Danielle is currently a category 1 hurricane which is not expected to be a threat to the United States and is headed northward toward Bermuda at 15 mph.

The other named storm, Tropical storm Earl is too far out yet to gauge what exactly it’ll do, but its current tracking north-west as well.

Video details the latest results of the Kepler mission launched last year, which has a mission of finding earth like planets outside of our solar system. Video talks about the first multi-planet system discovered by the Kepler spacecraft, and why its an important discovery.

Space transport company Space X successfully preformed a drop test of its space capsule prototype Dragon on August 12th. The drop was made from 14,000 feet off the coast of Morro Bay in California, and video of its descent is shown below.