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Christina Koch will set a record for longest spaceflight by a woman
Thanks to NASA's recent schedule changes, astronaut Christina Koch will soon hold the record for the longest space flight by a woman. Koch arrived at the International Space Station on March 14 and has already conducted one spacewalk. She'll now remain in orbit until February 2020, and she'll surpass the current record, which is 288 days, held by Peggy Whitson. But Koch will fall just short of the longest spaceflight by a NASA astronaut -- Scott Kelly's 340-day trip.
NASA's Space Shuttle launch videos are spectacularly incredible, incredibly spectacular
Did you know that it takes nearly seven and a half million pounds of thrust to get a Space Shuttle off the ground and into the final frontier? NASA opts to generate that power by burning through 1,000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second, which as you might surmise, makes for some arresting visuals. Thankfully, there are plenty of practical reasons why NASA would want to film its launches (in slow motion!), and today we get to witness some of that awe-inspiring footage, replete with a silky voiceover explaining the focal lengths of cameras used and other photographic minutiae. It's the definition of an epic video, clocking in at over 45 minutes, but if you haven't got all that time, just do it like us and skip around -- your brain will be splattered on the wall behind you either way.
