Get the wallpaper-sized version at NASA. [NASA]

In the photo I’m holding the latest gadget developed by our military. The device works in two modes. One allows eavesdropping on our colleagues in the American segment. You can … record all their conversations. Also, the device can be used for martial arts training – to be prepared for an alien attack on the Russian segment of the ISS. Guys, it’s just a joke, I hope you realize! It’s not some weapon or a spy gadget. Just an old pump that Roma and I replaced!

Surayev is the current flight engineer at the ISS, and the first Russian cosmonaut with a blog from space. It seems a lot more fun than the dry American’s. [Roscosmos—In Russian via Russia Today via Wired]

The former fire-breather founded the Cirque du Soleil and went to space in September in a Soyuz spacecraft after paying $US34.7 million.

He did a show from the International Space Station denouncing the shortage of clean water in some parts of the water. Nobody laughed. He then got a cream pie splashed on his face and still nobody laughed. [Daily Mail]

“I’m a person with a pretty high spirit, who’s there to crack jokes and make jokes to those guys, and while they’re sleeping, you know, I’ll be tickling them,” Laliberte said.

Laliberte even has a pocket full of red clown noses to give to the crew. Oooh boy…this is going to be the longest ISS mission ever. If they can handle this, Mars should be no sweat. Fortunately, this will be the last wealthy, eccentric space tourist the crew will have to deal with for quite some time. Astronauts from the US will take up the extra seats on Soyuz missions in order to travel back and forth from the ISS while the shuttle program transitions. [Yahoo via Neatorama]

Buzz was up there as part of a program by NASA and Disney to encourage students to study science, technology and maths. He’ll be honoured in a parade at Disney’s Magic Kingdom along with his space station crewmates and veteran Buzz Aldrin-on October 2.

Too. Freakin’. Cute. To infinity and beyond! [Orlando Sentinel and Newslite | Photo by Tony Landis/NASA]

Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there, and everywhere else.

Click on the image to zoom in. You can see downtown Manhattan—south, where the towers were—with the East River and Brooklyn on the top, and the Hudson and New Jersey on the bottom.

In the anniversary of the attack, let’s take a few minutes to reflect on the stupidity of all violence, and think about those who fell that day, and everyone affected by these attacks and any other coward terrorist act in the world. [NASA]

Back in June, astronauts onboard the International Space Station took a few spectacular photos of the Sarychev Peak volcano as it exploded in a 8-kilometre high plume of ash and gas. Now they have released an even more spectacular video.

The ISS was flying 354 kilometres over the island of Matua when the volcano erupted in a pyroclastic flow, a howling mass of ash and gas that moves at 209km/h, reaching temperatures up to 600C. Such a terrible mayhem, yet so beautiful. [Liveleak]

Jump to 8:40 to see this impressive array of laptops and screens, upside down in the International Space Station. Or downside sideways. Or left to right to back and then up bit. Or wherever the hell they are. I wonder if they transmit their Wi-Fi signals using their pointy nipple antennas—because you know that in space it’s cold, so your nipples get hard, and therefore conduct wireless signals a lot better than relaxed nipples. [Boing Boing]

The 2009 space odyssey is over. After endless troubles, the epic adventure that started in March has come to a happy ending: The Stephen Colbert treadmill has been installed in the International Space Station. Here you have the video proof.

The International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery almost had to dodge some deadly space debris yesterday. Again. NASA is not installing any lasers soon, but the US Air Force is moving forward on their own object defence plan.

The USAF is working with various companies to develop a system that will allow to track the more than 600,000 pieces of space debris that are orbiting the planet. It may seem like a small number compared to the immensity of space, but the fact is that things are getting quite hairy up there. Especially after last February, when two communication satellites—a Russian Cosmo and an American Iridium—collided at 113,000km/h, 790 kilometres above Siberia.

The system is called the Space Situation Awareness, or Space Fence, and will consist of three networked football field-sized S-band radars distributed all across the world. The radars will track every single dangerous piece of debris orbiting the planet, keeping it in a continuously updated database. If there is any collision danger, the alert will break, and the astronauts will live to see another day in their shiny white space suits.

Unfortunately, the $US2 billion system won’t be operational till 2015.