NASA and Star Wars: The Connections Are Strong in This One
December 21, 2015 | NASAEstimated reading time: 5 minutes
We couldn't resist having some fun with SPHERES and other NASA technology by creating a series of social media shareables for Star Wars Day, or "May the Fourth Be With You."
That’s No Moon, It's A ... Oh, Wait, It's Just a Moon
When we send our spacecraft into the solar system and point our telescopes beyond, we often see things that seem taken right out of the Star Wars universe. Saturn’s moon Mimas has become known as the "Death Star" moon because of how its 80-mile wide Herschel crater creates a resemblance to the Imperial battle station, especially when seen in this distant view from Cassini:
Let's all hope that thing hasn't yet become fully operational.
Farther from home, the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed what looks like a cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber in the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away. That's just a short hop once you've fired up the hyperdrive.
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