When NASA launched its last space shut­tle a year ago, McLean Fahne­stock paid trib­ute to the 30-year old shut­tle pro­gram by putting footage from every launch into one video. 135-in‑1.  It makes for an arrest­ing sequence. But, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the 1986 Chal­lenger explo­sion ends up over­whelm­ing the sto­ry. One Vimeo com­menter, Jere­my Rick­etts, got it right when he said:

I don’t know about the rest being a dec­o­ra­tive bor­der to Chal­lenger. In my eyes it high­light­ed what an insane­ly amaz­ing accom­plish­ment it was that out of all these launch­es, only two have ever result­ed in fail­ure of that type. This is the first reli­able, reusable vehi­cle to ever bring humans to space. Giv­en the vio­lence of the launch­es and sheer absur­di­ty of strap­ping a winged vehi­cle to the site of a rock­et, it high­lights (in my view) what an amaz­ing feat it was, even in light of [the] Chal­lenger.

Any­way, while we’re on the sub­ject, don’t miss some of our favorite space shut­tle videos from times past — like Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras, William Shat­ner’s Nar­ra­tion of a Film Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Space Shut­tle, and The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos from 1981 to 2010.

Enjoy the rest of the week­end.

via Kot­tke

Here it is. A short his­to­ry of the Moon. 4.5 bil­lion years cov­ered in a slick 2.6 min­utes, all thanks to NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. The video, mov­ing from the Moon’s hot cre­ation to its pock­marked present, can be down­loaded via NASA’s web site.

Now More Cul­ture from Around the Web (all pre­vi­ous­ly aired on our Twit­ter Stream):

BBC’s Col­lec­tion of Famous Authors Read­ing From Their Works

Five Key TED Talks, Accord­ing to The New York­er

“Oh my ass burns like fire! ” Mozart Writes a Let­ter to His Cousin, 1777

Sylvia Plath’s Draw­ings (Pre­sent­ed at London’s May­or Gallery)

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Recre­at­ed in 7,000 Domi­noes

Drunk Texts from Famous Authors, Cour­tesy of The Paris Review

An Abridged His­to­ry of Video Games in Under Three Min­utes

Matt Taib­bi Looks Back at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail” 

How William Faulkn­er Tack­led Race — and Freed the South From Itself

Colum McCann Reads His Sto­ry “Transat­lantic.” Added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books

Anne Frank’s Diary Was Almost Nev­er Pub­lished. Francine Prose Tells the Sto­ry

Dar­win & Design (MIT). Added to our List of 500 Free Cours­es (under Lit­er­a­ture)

Famed Har­vard Biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son Gives Advice to Young Sci­en­tists at TEDMed

Author Rohin­ton Mis­try Offers Words of Wis­dom to Grad­u­at­ing Class at Ryer­son Uni­ver­si­ty

Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, the Clas­sic Film by Bil­ly Wilder on YouTube

In the video above, NASA engi­neers explain the extreme­ly pre­cise cal­cu­la­tions gov­ern­ing the land­ing of Curios­i­ty, the sev­enth Mars Rover since the failed Sovi­et Mars 2 and 3 mis­sions in 1971. Launched in Novem­ber of 2011, Curios­i­ty is sched­uled to touch down in Gale Crater at exact­ly 10:31PM Pacif­ic time, this August 5^th. Using dra­mat­ic com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery, the video shows the rover’s approach as it breach­es the atmos­phere and hur­tles toward the sur­face of the plan­et in sev­er­al com­pli­cat­ed stages, a descent that takes exact­ly sev­en min­utes. The engi­neers call this span of time “sev­en min­utes of ter­ror”; since the sig­nal delay from the space­craft to earth is four­teen min­utes, NASA engi­neers must wait an addi­tion­al sev­en min­utes after its entry to learn whether the entire­ly-com­put­er-guid­ed craft has made it safe­ly to the sur­face or crashed and burned. Since it’s speed­ing down from the upper atmos­phere at 13,000 miles an hour and heat­ing up to 1600 degrees, their fears are cer­tain­ly war­rant­ed. And fear may be a sym­bol­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate emo­tion­al response to a plan­et named for the ancient god of war, with moons named Pho­bos and Diemos—“fear” and “ter­ror,” respec­tive­ly.

The Mars pro­gram has had sev­er­al false starts and a his­to­ry very much root­ed in the Cold War space race. Dur­ing the the 1960s, the U.S. and USSR sent com­pet­ing fly­by and orbiter mis­sions to the red plan­et, but it wasn’t until July 4, 1997 that NASA was able to land a func­tion­ing rover, the Pathfind­er, on the sur­face. A British-led attempt to land anoth­er rover, Bea­gle 2, was a fail­ure, but NASA suc­cess­ful­ly land­ed Spir­it in Jan­u­ary, 2004.  Sad­ly, Spir­it became mired in the thick sand of the planet’s sur­face and could not be freed. Spir­it’s twin, Oppor­tu­ni­ty, made a suc­cess­ful land­ing two weeks lat­er and has con­tin­ued to oper­ate with­out seri­ous inci­dent, save peri­ods of down­time over the Mars win­ter, when its solar pan­els can­not col­lect enough sun­light to pow­er it. Intend­ed to find signs of water on the plan­et, Oppor­tu­ni­ty has made dis­cov­er­ies that pro­vide clues to the geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry of Mars. After its ninth year of work, NASA’s only func­tion­ing rover is begin­ning to show its age. NASA engi­neers hope the S.U.V.-sized Curios­i­ty will sur­vive its ordeal and con­tin­ue the work of its pre­de­ces­sors, seek­ing more signs of water, and maybe find­ing signs of life.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.