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NASA Partners With the LEGO Group for Design and Build Contest

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WASHINGTON -- NASA and the LEGO Group are partnering to inspire the next generation of aerospace engineers by offering a new design competition. The competition will spur students of all ages to use the toy bricks in building models of future airplanes and spacecraft.

The "NASA's Missions: Imagine and Build" competition opens Wednesday with an entry deadline of July 31. Winners in each category will be selected by a panel of NASA and LEGO officials and announced Sept. 1.

The first category in the contest is "Inventing our Future of Flight." In this challenge, participants will design and build their idea for an aircraft of the future based on real concepts and new technology NASA's aeronautics innovators are working on to increase fuel efficiency and reduce harmful emissions and noise.

In addition to building a model from LEGO bricks or using the LEGO Digital Designer computer program, participants in this category also must prepare and write a technical paper. The paper will explain how the contest design takes advantage of NASA's ideas and potentially improves on them.

This category divides entrants into two groups: young student builders ages 13 to 18 and an open group for anyone age 13 and older. The two winners will receive a custom-made LEGO trophy and a collection of NASA memorabilia.

The second contest category is "Imagine our Future Beyond Earth." In this challenge, participants will use their imaginations to design and build a futuristic vehicle from LEGO bricks that might travel through the air or in space. It could be an airplane, rotorcraft, rocket, spacecraft, satellite, rover or something else. The design can be based in reality or purely a flight of fancy. This competition is open to entrants 16 or older. The grand prize is a LEGO set signed by the set's designer and a collection of NASA memorabilia. There also is a runner up prize.

To read the complete rules and guidelines for submitting the LEGO model and technical paper, visit:

http://rebrick.lego.com/

LEGO Systems, Inc. is the North American division of The LEGO Group, a privately-held, family-owned company based in Billund, Denmark. The company is one of the world's leading manufacturers of creatively educational play materials for children. For more information and to visit the virtual LEGO world, go to:

http://www.LEGO.com

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NASA Partners With the LEGO Group for Design and Build Contest

NASA Reveals New, Detailed Portraits of Two of Our Closest Galactic Neighbors

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The next time you have a chance to look up at the night sky, bear in mind that nearly every thing you can see with your bare eyes is something in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Of the 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the universe (some estimates put that number even higher, at 500 billion) only a handful are visible in the night sky from Earth without a telescope. Two of those, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, were recently the subjects of a NASA ultraviolet survey, and the agency has just released some dazzling pictures of these neighbors, just 163,000 and 200,000 light years away, respectively. Both galaxies are visible to astronomers and star-gazers from our planet's southern hemisphere.

The top image shows the galaxies as they appear in visible light. Here's each as NASA's Swift satellite saw them in ultraviolet.

Large Magellanic Cloud

Small Magellanic Cloud

Both of the images are mosaics compiled of many images (2,200 for the LMC and 656 for the SMC). The images were collected over a total of more than six days.

The two galaxies are relatively small. The Milky Way is about 10 times bigger than the LMC (14,000 light years across), which itself is twice as big as the SMC (7,000 light years across). We can see them in the night sky not because of their size but because of their proximity.

Ultraviolet detection allows scientists to see where a galaxies hottest stars and nebulae are. The survey revealed about 1 million such light sources in the LMC and 250,000 in the SMC.

Not that long ago, when astronomers looked to the sky, they wondered whether there were other planets out there orbiting nearby stars. Over the past ten years, an explosion of data and observations have shown us that not just are there planets out there but there are billions and billion of them in our galaxy alone. When we look beyond our own galaxy to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, they're no longer clouds at all, but smudges of hundreds of thousands distinct points of light, and maybe some (many?) of those stars have planets orbiting them too.

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NASA Reveals New, Detailed Portraits of Two of Our Closest Galactic Neighbors

Asteroid 1998 QE2 That’s No Moon NASA That’s A Space Station 06-02-2013 – Video

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Asteroid 1998 QE2 That #39;s No Moon NASA That #39;s A Space Station 06-02-2013
Recently released radar imagery of 1998 QE2 show an object near the Asteroid, NASA says it #39;s a moon and you already know I #39;m about to go against the grain on...

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Asteroid 1998 QE2 That's No Moon NASA That's A Space Station 06-02-2013 - Video


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