geekosystem

If you weren't already aware, the Sun's been seeing a whole lot of action of late. Like, it's still being the Sun, but it's also putting out incredible X-class solar flares, complete with coronal mass ejections. The latter doesn't necessarily require the former, though, and that's where we find ourselves at currently. Thanks to a couple of coronal mass ejections yesterday, there's a good chance we're going to get some geomagnetic storm activity over the next few days.

With all the hubbub surrounding the landing of the Curiosity rover, folks tend to forget that it's not the only device operating on the planet. The Opportunity rover's still kicking up there, for example, and it's hauling butt to get the job done. It's been hauling so much butt, in fact, that on Thursday it broke NASA's 40-year-old record for total distance traveled on a world other than Earth.

Today at 12:00 PM EDT J.J. Abrams and the cast of Star Trek Into Darkness will have a Google Hangout with astronauts, including Chris Cassidy, one of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station who recently went on a space walk to fix an ammonia leak on the station. You can watch the whole thing right here, and we even have the details on how you can try to get a question in.

NASA had a press conference earlier today where they announced that the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has gone into safe mode. It doesn't look great for the mission at the moment, because when engineers brought the craft back to normal mode they found one of its reaction wheels is dead. It's the second of the craft's four wheels to die, which is bad because it needs a minimum of three.

The Sun is ramping up towards its peak activity in its 11-year-cycle, and it's doing so in a big way. In one 24-hour period, the Sun has erupted with three progressively more intense X-class solar flares from the same region, each with its own coronal mass ejection. The CMEs are not heading in the direction of Earth, but could affect some spacecraft.

With humans continuing our long, slow journey into space, it's only a matter of time before children are conceived and born in space, whether it's on a space station like the ISS or a colony on Mars. But future generations of space babies -- and perhaps Martians, technically speaking -- could run into a number of problems. Humans are pretty good at having babies on Earth, because we've been doing it for quite some time, but other environments might not be so kind to developing fetuses, which couldn't be expected to recover from the stretched spines and swollen faces that astronauts return to Earth with so easily.

Chris Hadfield launched to the International Space Station on December 19, 2012. In March of this year he became the first Canadian commander of the ISS. While serving on the ISS, Hadfield has recorded music, posted pictures and videos, and engaged the world through social media in an unprecedented way. He returns to Earth tonight, and you can watch the live feed right here.

All good things must end, it's said. As a perfect example of this, Chris Hadfield can't stay in space forever. He's set to return to the planet late tomorrow, May 13th, and it's kind of a bittersweet time for everyone that's grown to love his updates from the International Space Station. There's something magical about the way he's been able to rekindle personal interest in space over the course of his stay. There's a new, and likely final, video from Hadfield sharing his mission reflections, and it may or may not have made me tear up a bit.

There's an ammonia leak on the International Space Station, and at the time of this writing astronauts Christopher Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are on a spacewalk to fix it. So far they've reported there's "no smoking gun" in terms of where the leak is coming from, but their suits feature cameras, so you can watch the whole thing streaming live, and that's amazing.

Chris Hadfield is definitely one of our favorite astronauts, and as part of his stay on the International Space Station he's been explaining how stuff works up there and performing experiments. This particular video was shot before the big issue with the ammonia leak, but it only seems right that Hadfield recently discussed why it's particularly difficult to smell in space. Hint: It has to do with your head swelling up.

An ammonia leak in the system that cools the International Space Station may be more severe than initially thought, say officials familiar with the situation. Ground crews are working overtime to try and determine the cause of the leak, and emergency spacewalks  that will let astronauts on board diagnose -- and ideally fix -- the problem are being scheduled  for the coming days.

This week Explore Mars, Inc. has been hosting the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington D.C. and you can watch the final day of the event live right here. Agencies from around the world have come together to discuss what it would take to put humans on Mars, and today they'll be discussing how to inspire people around their goal, the policy changes that would be needed, and Buzz Aldrin will be talking about his new book on Mars at 2:00 PM EDT. The full schedule of the days events are below.

The original Star Trek shuttlecraft Galileo has found a forever home that couldn't be more fitting. After being restored by fans, the shuttle is on its way to Space Center Houston, where it will retire in the company of NASA spacecraft like the Apollo 17 command module welcoming visitors to the Johnson Space Center.

Mars One has begun their search for four volunteer astronauts to be sent on a one-way mission to Mars in 2023. The search has only been going on for two weeks now, but Mars One already has 78,000 applicants from more than 120 different countries around the world. I questioned who would be interested in this in a previous article. Turns out: A whole lot of people.

According to Steve Schnier, no one has ever sent a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise into space before. That's not a world he wanted to live in, so he decided to do it himself. On April 28th Schnier and his wife Heather Shaw used a balloon to launch a model of the Enterprise 100,000 feet in the air. That's not quite space, but at just under 19 miles high, it sure makes for a lovely video.