Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks on lunar surface near leg of Lunar Module. Credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA, (1969) in the public domain.

It’s July 20, 1969.  Along with 600 million people, nine-year-old Chris Hadfield is glued to his television—watching intently as American astronaut Neil Armstrong glides down the ladder of the Lunar Module, and in one swift pounce, touches the dust of a familiar yet alien world. His words forever immortalized, “That’s one small step for man,…

Satellites to understand our changing Earth. Image: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Yesterday, the European Space Agency announced an Open Access policy for images and data under a Creative Commons BY-SA license. ESA has made various moves toward making data and images more open in the past, but this announcement is a major milestone for the organization’s commitment to openness. Previously, ESA released individual images under Creative…

Hubble Space Telescope and Earth Limb / NASA on The Commons / No known copyright restrictions If you could send a folder with 50 MB of content to every human on Earth, what would you include? This weekend Creative Commons volunteers and Outernet are hosting a CC Content Edit-a-thon to populate the first Outernet library…

“Voyager Golden Record Cover Explanation” by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons The Voyager Spacecrafts are carrying with them sounds of the earth, of our civilization, recorded on a 12″ gold plated copper disc, a golden record, along with instructions for how to play them.…