electron daydreams

The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.

Seen at a depth thousands of times more faint than the dimmest visible star, tens of millions of other suns appear, still perhaps only a hundredth of one percent thought to exist in our galaxy alone. Our Milky Way galaxy is the dominant feature, its dusty arms sweeping through the frame, punctuated by red clouds of glowing hydrogen. To the lower right are our nearest neighbors, each small galaxies themselves with their own hundreds of millions of stars.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has initiated a study to inspire the first steps in the next era of space exploration—a journey between the stars.

Fuel is a major issue when it comes to long-duration spaceflights - its weight is a problem for launch and once a spacecraft runs out of fuel there's no place to get more. That's where in-space "gas" stations located in strategic spots along a route would be a boon to spaceflight.

Which is exactly what NASA is looking to do by beginning to solicit proposals for what it calls an In-Space Cryogenic Propellant Storage and Transfer Demonstration that will lay the ground work for humans to safely reach multiple destinations, including the Moon, asteroids, Lagrange points and Mars.