NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK XLVII

Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 4 February 2013.

Iran sends a monkey to space, Curiosity makes tracks, and Andromeda shines in the latest space pictures.

1. Printing a Moon Base

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.

It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility.

"Terrestrial 3-D printing technology has produced entire structures," said Laurent Pambaguian, head of the project for ESA, in a statement.

On Earth, 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, produces a three-dimensional object from a digital file. The computer takes cross-sectional slices of the structure to be printed and sends it to the 3-D printer. The printer bonds liquid or powder materials in the shape of each slice, gradually building up the structure. (Watch how future astronauts could print tools in space.)

The ESA and its industrial partners have already manufactured a 1.7 ton (1.5 tonne) honeycombed building block to demonstrate what future construction materials would look like.

2. Winter Wonder

Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN

Like a beacon drawing the eye skyward, this picture of Yosemite's Half Dome taken January 19 showcases the stars that shine over this famed valley. The clear winter night evokes the crisp bite of a Sierra Nevada evening. (Read about a new generation of superclimbers pushing the limits in Yosemite, from National Geographic magazine.)

3. Space Monkey

Pictures released January 29 by Iran accompanied an announcement that the country had successfully sent a monkey into space. Reports from The New York Times and the Associated Press stated that the rocket went straight up to a height of about 72 miles (120 kilometres), just to the edge of space, and then came back down with its live payload.

People began questioning the veracity of Iran's claim when they noticed that photographs showing the monkey strapped into a protective chair (pictured) and at a post-flight event seemed to show two different individuals.

Mohammad Ebrahimi, a senior Iranian space official, told the Associated Press on February 2 that the pictures were of two different monkeys, but that Iran had indeed successfully sent one of them to space.

Ebrahimi explained the discrepancy by saying that they had trained three to five monkeys to make the trip, but used the one that was best suited to the mission. He said that some of the pictures were archived shots of researchers preparing the monkeys for launch. (Related: "The Unsung Heroes of the Space Program.")

4. Solar Somersault

In an image released January 23, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) caught a solar prominence bursting from the surface of the sun. Sometimes known as solar filaments, extreme ultraviolet sensors on the SDO caught the evolution of the prominence over seven hours. (Learn about the secrets of the sun.)

5. Martian Tracks

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a colour, high-resolution image of Curiosity's landing site in an image released January 30.

The two white spots on the right side of the photograph are where the sky crane's rockets blew away surface materials as it delivered the red planet's latest rover.

HiRISE also picked up Curiosity's track marks (darker double lines) leading away from the landing site, wandering over the Martian surface like a curious snail leaving a slime trail. (Learn how Curiosity sent home a self-portrait.)

6. Celestial Eye

This new image of the Andromeda galaxy, taken by the European Space Agency's observatory Herschel and released January 28, reveal the temperature variations in the rings of dust swirling around our galactic neighbour.

Using a powerful infrared sensor, Herschel reveals that the centre of the Andromeda galaxy hosts dust at warmer temperatures (coloured blue) than the outer reaches of its rings, where dust hovering a few degrees above absolute zero reside.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]