NASA / STScI

Mars looms large in a Hubble Space Telescope photo - and in the imaginations of those who have signed up for a one-way trip to the Red Planet. "It's not that I'm trying to get away," says 18-year-old Kayli McArthur, one of tens of thousands of applicants. "It's like I'm trying to strive for something more."

A one-way trip to Mars sounds like something you'd wish on your worst enemy — so why would more than 78,000 people from around the world pay up to $75 for a chance to die on another planet?

"I can say I have an ulterior motive," said David Brin, who has written more than a dozen science-fiction novels — including "The Postman," which was turned into a Kevin Costner movie in 1997. "I'd get a lot of writing done, and it might be memorable."

As a master of hard science fiction, the 62-year-old Brin knows better than most applicants what the first Red Planet settlers would face if they're sent off in 2022, as the Dutch-based Mars One venture has proposed.

The settlers would have to be sealed up in habitats, protected from harsh radiation, supplied with machine-made air and water, and nourished by whatever food can be grown on a cold, barren planet. They'd have to keep their sanity, millions of miles away from their families and Mission Control. Worst of all, they'd have to face the fact that there's no guarantee of ever going back.

Will this scheme actually work? "I give it a low probability of happening," Brin said, "and I don't consider it to be the most responsible thing I've ever seen."

Nevertheless, the venture has an attraction for Brin and tens of thousands of others, The ages of those listed in Mars One's database range from 18 to 71. All those applicants are facing a long road even before the first four-person crew gets off the planet. Mars One is accepting applicants through Aug. 31. The field of applicants would first be whittled down by panels of experts. Then they'd undergo trial by reality TV, followed by years of training.

"This may sound crazy, but it kind of reminds me of 'The Hunger Games,'" said Kayli McArthur, an 18-year-old student who's one of the youngest Mars One applicants. "It's cool that it would be televised, but that's not my whole thing."

On the other end of the age spectrum, 71-year-old psychiatrist Sanford Pomerantz is a little surprised that it's taking this long to get something like Mars One off the ground. "I thought by now we would have colonized Mars," said Pomerantz, who's currently the oldest applicant on Mars One's list.

So what's the appeal of Mars One? It's too early for Brin, McArthur and Pomerantz to give a lot of thought to their adventure on Mars, let alone their death on Mars. Instead, they're focusing on the adventure here on Earth. Here's what's behind their thinking:

Mars One

Click on the image to go to David Brin's Mars One application video.

David Brin: 'My main purpose is the conversation'
Brin sees Mars One as just one of a number of ventures aimed at expanding humanity's frontier, ranging from Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tours to Golden Spike's moon missions. "It's emblematic of the new era that we're about to enter at long last — what I call the barnstorming era," he said.

Like the daring airplane fliers of the 1920s, these 21st-century space barnstormers are willing to take bigger risks in hopes of providing bigger thrills — and eventually, earning bigger payoffs. The Mars One project is "a great way to get the discussion going," Brin said.

"You have to assume that it may not work, and that there will be a statue of you on Mars someday," he said. "I'm aware of the tradeoffs, and I'm willing to explore it further, but largely my main purpose is the conversation. We've got to be talking about how we can be a more exploratory people — a more interesting people, if you like."

Brin doesn't doubt that Mars One will find plenty of qualified (and interesting) people willing to take the risk.

"People who cannot imagine any sane person making that choice simply aren't envisioning the wide range of human diversity," said Brin, who has three children in school. "Consider what I told my family. By the very earliest date that Mars One might launch, I expect to be a spry 75-year-old whose kids are already successfully launched, and who might spend a few years doing something truly remarkable."

Even if it means dying on alien soil? Brin isn't completely sure he'd go that far, but he's willing to bet that others would.

"I think you'll find tens of thousands of people who, under those circumstances, will at least ponder it seriously," Brin said.

Mars One

Click on the image to go to Kayli McArthur's Mars One application video.

Kayli McArthur: 'I'm trying to strive for something more'
McArthur, a freshman at the University of Arizona, is one of more than three dozen 18-year-olds on Mars One's list of applicants. Ever since she applied, she's been hearing that she has her whole life ahead of her, so why would she want to leave it all behind for Mars?

"Being young doesn't make me want to do it any less because I have my whole life ahead of me," she said. "It makes it more exciting. ... I love all my friends, my guy friends, my family. It's not that I'm trying to get away. It's like I'm trying to strive for something more."

She has long dreamed of going into outer space, and she figures that her future degree in materials science would come in handy for creating the first interplanetary settlement. "Going to Mars, there are so many opportunities for that," she said. 

So far, her family hasn't stood in her way. "My family jokes, like, 'Oh, Kayli, have your fun with it,'" she said. If the selection process gets more serious, she suspects she might face more resistance from her parents. But not from her grandfather.

"My grandpa is a retired three-star [general] in the Air Force," she said. "We were talking about it. I get really worked up and excited, and he was talking about it, too, and being realistic about it. He said, 'That would be so cool if you were able to do it.' ... I know my grandpa would totally support me."

Mars One

Click on the image to go to Sanford Pomerantz's Mars One application video.

Sanford Pomerantz: 'Grandpa is going to Mars!'
Pomerantz is old enough to remember when the idea of sending people into outer space seemed as far out as the idea of sending people on a one-way trip to Mars seems now. One of the books that made an impression on him in grade school was Robert Heinlein's "Red Planet: A Colonial Boy on Mars," which was published in 1949.

"I started as a physics major in the university, but then I got accepted into med school and changed directions," he said. At the age of 71, he's still a practicing psychiatrist in Topeka, Kan. But he's also still holding onto that boyhood dream of spaceflight.

"The Mars thing is exciting, because I hope it'll stimulate people to get interested in space. ... And I hope it has the secondary effect of stimulating science education, especially in the U.S.," he said.

Just as McArthur believes that Mars will need a materials scientist, Pomerantz believes the crew will need a psychiatrist. "Psychologically, it's going to be an interesting challenge, but human beings are very adaptable," he said. "It'll be exciting to go to a whole new world. It'll be a major step in human evolution."

If Pomerantz ends up being selected for the first Mars crew, he's likely to become not only the oldest human to head for the Red Planet, but the oldest human to go on any space mission. (The current record-holder is John Glenn, who flew on the shuttle Discovery when he was 77 years old.) For now at least, that prospect doesn't faze Pomerantz's three children and two grandchildren. "The grandchildren are excited," he said. "It's like, 'Grandpa is going to Mars!'"

Pomerantz became a certified scuba diver just two years ago, and he still expects to be in good physical and mental shape for liftoff in 2022. "Remember, age is a state of mind," he said. "Chronologlcally, I may be 71. ... But psychologically and physically, I'm definitely in my 20s. I look in the mirror and say, 'Who's that old guy?'"

More about missions to Mars:

• Inspiration Mars: So crazy it just might work
• Buzz Aldrin envisions US leading way to Mars
• Cosmic Log archive on Mars

David Brin's latest science-fiction novel is "Existence," which is set in the latter part of the 21st century and involves matters way beyond Mars.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Laurent Silvani

The northern lights shine over La Baie in Quebec at 2 a.m. Saturday, in a picture taken by Laurent Silvani. To see more of Silvani's work, check out his Silvani.ca website and his Facebook page.

A slight solar storm ejected from a powerful sunspot sparked northern lights as far south as Colorado on Friday night — and there should be more to come.

The heightened aurora was sparked by a burst of electrically charged particles thrown off from an active spot on the sun known as Region 1748. That region is the one responsible for four powerful X-class flares that blasted out from the sun this week. Region 1748 is just now turning in our direction, and forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center say it has the potential to throw some hefty storms our way.

Storms from the sun have the potential to disrupt satellite communications and power grids, and in extreme cases, the radiation risk could force airlines to reroute their intercontinental flights to lower latitudes. But Joe Kunches, a spokesman for the prediction center, said experts now have much better capabilities at their command to reduce the risks. And so far, he said, the active sun has been throwing "softballs" at us — at least compared with bigger flare-ups like the Halloween storms of 2003 or the Bastille Day storm of 2000.

The most noticeable effects of recent solar disruptions have come in the form of enhanced auroral displays. SpaceWeather.com reports that faint glows were recorded Friday night in Colorado as well as Vermont, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Washington state.

Farther north, the fireworks show was significantly brighter. Astrophotographer Laurent Silvani captured some great images from Quebec's Saguenay region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Quebec City.

"Following a magnetic storm, the aurora borealis was particularly visible in the sky with its waves and colors. A particularly beautiful sight!" he wrote in an email. "Many people from the Saguenay do not know that there are auroras occasionally here. They are surprised to see my pictures every time."

Check out Silvani's website and Facebook page for more.

For additional views of auroral glories — including, yes, some photos of the southern lights as seen from Antarctica —take a spin through SpaceWeather.com's photo gallery. And who knows? You might be able to catch the show yourself over the next couple of nights. Another geomagnetic storm is expected to sweep over Earth's magnetic field on Sunday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

To find out what can be seen from where, keep an eye on the center's Facebook page as well as its Ovation aurora forecast maps. If you're in the aurora zone, the best time to look is after midnight. The best places are far away from city lights, with clear, crisp skies. Got pictures? Share them with us via NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload page.

While you're waiting for those dark skies, feast your eyes on these beautiful time-lapse aurora videos, plus our slideshow: 

Slideshow: Lights in the sky

Click through stunning images of the auroral displays created by geomagnetic storms.

Launch slideshow

More auroral glories:

• Northern lights dance with a comet
• Spend a night with the lights — in a minute
• Cosmic Log's aurora archive

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

An artist's conception shows NASA's Kepler space telescope observing a planetary transit.

NASA is getting plenty of advice — and sympathy — as it assesses whether its Kepler planet-hunting telescope can be revived after the failure of its reaction-control system. The reactions from scientists and engineers range from repair tips to an Audenesque elegy. Here's a sampling:

How to fix Kepler
The reason why the $600 million Kepler spacecraft can no longer search for planetary transits is that two of its four gyroscopic reaction wheels can no longer spin. Mission managers say Kepler needs at least three of those wheels in working order to hold its position still enough to stare at alien stars.

The most recent part to fail is known as reaction wheel 4. The mission's deputy project manager, Charlie Sobeck, told reporters that the Kepler team could try putting some reverse torque on that wheel in hopes of freeing it up.

Two other possibilities were raised by Scott Hubbard, who headed NASA's Ames Research Center during the development of the Kepler mission and is now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University.

One option would be to try turning on reaction wheel 2, which failed last July. "It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work," Hubbard said in a Stanford Q&A.

"The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability," he said. The mission's principal investigator, Ames' Bill Borucki, said on Wednesday the thrusters couldn't hold the spacecraft stable enough for planet-hunting. Nevertheless, it might be one of the options under consideration.

For the time being, Kepler has been put into a holding pattern that should minimize its thruster fuel consumption and give the Kepler team several months to weigh all the options, the costs and the potential scientific benefits.

Going beyond Kepler
Even if the Kepler spacecraft can't be revived, Borucki says that only half of the data collected so far have been fully analyzed. He estimates it'll take another two years or so to complete the analysis.

Meanwhile, NASA has just given the go-ahead its next planet-hunting satellite: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. That $200 million project would put a telescope array in space in 2017 to perform an all-sky survey, looking for exoplanets in orbit around the nearest and brightest stars. That strategy is markedly different from the one used by Kepler, which stared at a relatively small patch of sky straddling the constellations Cygnus and Vega.

This October, the European Space Agency plans to launch a space probe called Gaia to conduct a census of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. Gaia could detect thousands of distant planetary systems, and measure their orbits and masses using a technique known as astrometry.

ESA is working on another planet hunter called the Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite, or CHEOPS, which is due for launch in 2017. CHEOPS would conduct high-resolution transit observations of stars that have already been found to host planets. 

The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA bills as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, could conceivably analyze the atmospheres of alien planets. It's currently due for launch in 2018.

Paying tribute to Kepler
NASA's associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, said it's too early to consider Kepler "down and out." But many astronomers fear that Kepler's planet-hunting days are finished.

"I think 'The mission is not over' means 'the mission is over,'" Caltech's Mike Brown said in a Twitter update on Wednesday. "Might be other things it can do. But, kids, I think the mission is over."

Alan Boss, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who's part of the Kepler team, was similarly downbeat. In an email sent to AAAS MemberCentral, he called this week's setback a "disaster":

"I am afraid that the loss of this second reaction wheel effectively means the partial loss of Kepler's main science goal: determining the frequency of Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars at distances such that liquid water could occur on the planets' surfaces. Kepler has taken an outstandingly impressive four years of data, but we still need another three or so years of outstandingly impressive data to be certain of the frequency of Earth-size planets. Right now we have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, but that is not the same as actually determining that number. Kepler was planned to do that for us. There is no other mission in sight that can reproduce for us what Kepler was in the process of doing. The upcoming (2017) NASA TESS Mission will help to push the exoplanet field forward, but it is not designed to find Earthlike planets around sunlike stars, like Kepler was."

"This is one of the saddest days in my life. A crippled Kepler may be able to do other things, but it cannot do the one thing it was designed to do."

Another Kepler team member, Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, told KQED that he felt dizzy and teary-eyed over the spacecraft's situation. "It’s a loss for our species," he said. "That sounds dramatic, but we pride ourselves as a species of exploration, seeking answers beyond the horizon, answers about our place in the universe. And Kepler was answering those questions."

Marcy went so far as to tweak W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" to pay tribute to Kepler. Here's the astronomer's elegy to a spacecraft:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the Internet,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let jet airplanes circle at night overhead
Sky-writing over Cygnus: Kepler is dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of doves,
Let the traffic officers wear black cotton gloves.

Kepler was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week, no weekend rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talks, my song;
I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are still wanted now; let's honor every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing will ever be this good.

With thanks to W.H.Auden.

For a video rendition of "Funeral Blues," check out this clip from "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: The World at Night 2013

Andreas Max Baeckle

The winners of the 2013 "Earth and Sky" photo contest show off the beauties of the night sky and demonstrate the effects of light pollution.

Launch slideshow

Are the images featured in The World at Night's annual "Earth and Sky" photography contest meant to celebrate the wonders of the night sky, or draw attention to the worries about the night sky? They're meant to do both, says astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.

For example, consider "Stars Over Salzburg," one of this year's top-rated images. Your first impulse is to marvel at the golden glow of the Austrian city, as seen from an Alpine vantage point high above.

"But then you realize the photographer has moved away from the city to the mountaintops in order to separate himself from the light pollution," Tafreshi, founder of The World at Night, told NBC News in an email. "Inside the yellow light cast by the city, people are no longer able to see this beauty."

That's the tragedy of the modern world, right? Studies suggest that as much as 80 percent of the world's population can no longer see the Milky Way, due to the lights that illuminate our cities and roadways. But it doesn't have to be that way, and the picture of Salzburg proves it. Tafreshi pointed out that the direct, unshielded glow of city lights can be seen even from a mountaintop.

"That shows that the lights are shining upward," he said. "Light pollution is not the lights we need for our modern world. It's the unnecessary, wrong-directed and excessive light that scatters to the sky instead of illuminating the ground. It isn't just an astronomer's problem. It's a major waste of energy, it disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects."

The International Dark-Sky Association estimates that $1 billion is spent in the United States every year to generate artificial light that goes to waste. And as other countries become more urbanized, the stars disappear from wider swaths of the world.

"Our images try to show how the night sky is an essential part of our environment, and not just an astronomer's laboratory," Tafreshi said. "They display how the night sky is becoming a forgotten part of nature for many people in urban, light-polluted areas. A major goal for us in TWAN imaging is to reclaim the beauties of the night sky and make people aware of this."

The World at Night isn't just about the dark side of the disappearing sky. The winning photos include views that reveal cosmic glories in all their purity. "A good example in this year's contest is 'Crossed Destiny' by Luc Perrot, from Reunion Island near Madagascar," Tafreshi said. "The stunning view of the Milky Way above the Indian Ocean has no touch of our modern world. The galactic band is merged with the horizon of our planet."

Click through our slideshow of images from this year's "Earth and Sky" contest, and check out The World at Night's website for still more cosmic glories and cautionary tales.

More beauties of the world at night:

• The World at Night 2012: Darkness and light
• Slideshow: The World at Night 2011
• All-time top 10 astronomy pictures
• The Month in Space Pictures: April 2013

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield finished out his five-month flurry of songs, snapshots and social media from outer space with a real doozy: a rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that even Bowie is retweeting.

The music video was months in the making: With Bowie's approval, the song's lyrics were tweaked to reflect Hadfield's return from the International Space Station on Monday aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. "Lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on," Hadfield sings in the video. After showing scenes of Hadfield strumming on his guitar and gazing soulfully out the station's windows, the video winds up with a Soyuz parachuting down to its landing.

Since "Space Oddity" went up on Sunday, it's been viewed on YouTube more than 2.7 million times.

The YouTube hit caps off an orbital tour of duty during which Hadfield sent down thousands of pictures via his Twitter account, performed the first original song recorded on the space station, mixed it up with "Star Trek" icon William Shatner and unveiled Canada's new $5 bill. For the past two months, he was doing all this while serving as the station's first Canadian commander.

"He's brought space back, not just for Canadians but for the world," fellow Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen told NBC News.

Dreams of space
Hadfield, 53, began his path to stardom during his childhood on a corn farm in southern Ontario. Watching Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon in 1969 inspired him to dream of becoming an astronaut when he was 9 years old. He started flying airplanes in his teens, and went on to become a fighter pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces. He's been an astronaut since 1992, and he flew on space shuttle missions in 1995 and 2001.

Last December, he finally got his shot at a long-term stint in space — and he definitely made the most of the experience.

Slideshow: The antics and artistry of astronaut Chris Hadfield

Canadian spaceflier Chris Hadfield has posted incredible pictures of the world from space. He has also explained how to brush your teeth, shave and clip your nails while weightless.

Launch slideshow

Hadfield's 28-year-old son, Evan, told NBC News that his father put in several hours a day snapping pictures and sending tweets, in addition to his usual 10-hour work shift aboard the station. "When he wasn't working directly for space station maintenance, or on one of his science experiments, he was doing something with his time to benefit people down here," Evan Hadfield said.

Evan worked long hours, too, without pay. Over the past five months, he has been managing his father's social-media accounts and taking the lead in getting videos like "Space Oddity" produced. "I work about 16 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "Last week I worked 19 hours a day. ... I read about 13,000 to 17,000 messages a day, and that's just in the morning."

"Space Oddity" was a special case, in part due to a tangle of international copyright issues. The Hadfields started working with Bowie and his team, as well as NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, even before the astronaut's launch in December. "It was definitely something we wanted to do," Evan said.

Why do it? Chris Hadfield hinted at the reasons in a different farewell-to-space video: "Who'd have thought that five months away from the planet would make you feel closer to people?" he asked. "Not closer because I miss them — just closer because seeing this [experience] this way and being able to share it through all the media that we've used has allowed me to get a direct reflection back immediately from so many people. ... It makes me feel like I'm actually with people more, that we're having a conversation. That this experience is not individual, but it's shared and it's worldwide."

Hansen said all of Hadfield's pictures, videos and tweets could be boiled down to a simple message: "We do live on a spaceship, a spaceship called Earth, and we need to work together to protect it."

The next chapter
So what's next? After Hadfield and his two Soyuz crewmates touch down in Kazakhstan, they'll be whisked away in separate directions: Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko will head toward Moscow, while Hadfield and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn will be flown directly back to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for medical checks, debriefings, rest and recuperation.

"We have a lot in store for these guys over a number of weeks," Hansen said. And that's not counting a single tweet.

It's hard to believe that Hadfield will be out of the social-media spotlight for long. "We've still got a lot of stuff," Evan Hadfield said. There are still lots of photos and videos from his father's spaceflight that have yet to be shared. But not even the Hadfields know how all those visions from outer space will come out, and on what timetable.

"I don't know, and I don't even want to speculate, because what if I'm wrong?" Evan said. "I hope, I really hope that people take Dad's message to heart and continue it past his return."

Update for 12:25 p.m. ET May 14: The "Space Oddity" video viewership is up to nearly the 7 million mark, and Hadfield commented on the YouTube phenomenon shortly after his landing in Kazakhstan. "I'm very happy that ... 7 million are interested. It is very interesting and historic to be in space," Reuters quoted Hadfield as saying.

"It's part of humanity to be in space," Hadfield said in Russian. "What we were feeling, what we were doing there, the music we played, this is a big part of our lives." 

More about Chris Hadfield:

• Astronaut's artistry hits warp speed
• How Canada's top astronaut sees the world
• Cosmic Log archive on Chris Hadfield

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 7:49 PM EDT

Satellite imagery can serve as a time machine, revealing dramatic change in just a few seconds — but can you imagine documenting almost three decades' worth of all that change, across most of our planet's land mass? A team of imaging experts, computer scientists and journalists did. Now they've unveiled the result: a global database of zoomable, animated satellite views known as Timelapse.

"We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public," Rebecca Moore, engineering manager for Google Earth Engine and Earth outreach, said Thursday in Google's blog announcement of the Timelapse project.

Moore said the project began in 2009, when Google started working with the U.S. Geological Society to make its archive of Landsat imagery available online. The team sifted through more than 2 million satellite images, adding up to 909 terabytes of data, and selected cloudless, high-quality views for every year since 1984.

Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab smoothed the views into seamless animations, and Time magazine built it all into a presentation that supplements the time-lapse animations with commentaries on climate change, urban growth and the other trends that are transforming the planet.

"I've been chiseling away at this project over the last 11 months, and am in awe of the folks who helped this come together in ways I could never have conceived on my own. Some very bright minds figured out how to make the biggest video frames ever constructed, equivalent to 900,000 HD TVs next to one another," Jonathan Woods, the Time project's executive producer (and a former colleague at msnbc.com), said in an email.

Google Earth is also hosting the Timelapse zoomable map. "Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission — which had a profound effect on many of us — this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore, but we also hope it can inform the global community's thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future," Moore said.

When it comes to telling the story of our changing planet, one time-lapse animation is worth a thousand words. But there's more to tell. Find out more about the trends illustrated in the seven animated images you see here:

Columbia Glacier: Alaska's retreating ice reveals how climate change is changing Earth's surface.

Dubai coastal expansion: New islands are sprouting along Dubai's coastline as part of a $14 billion land reclamation effort, arguably the largest project of its kind.

Irrigation in Saudi Arabia: Agriculture amid the deserts of Arabia? It's a growing concern, thanks to huge irrigation projects that take advantage of underground rivers and lakes. The water won't last, though: Hydrologists estimate that it'll be economical to pump water for only about 50 years. 

Lake Urmia drying up: Iran's great salt lake is not as great as it was, and the reason for that is in dispute. The Iranian government blames climate change and drought, while critics blame the dams that have been built around the lake.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation: Satellite imagery documents the loss of Amazonian forest land in Brazil due to road-building, logging and agricultural clearing.

Las Vegas urban growth: What sprawls in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. Landsat pictures reveal how urban development has spread out around Nevada's biggest city over the decades.

Wyoming coal mining: The Black Thunder mine in Wyoming's Powder River Basin ranks as the largest single coal mining complex in the world, according to Arch Coal, its operator. Satellite imagery shows how the mine has spread out over the decades.

More time-lapse videos:

• One World Trade Center rises
• Shuttle Endeavour traverses L.A.
• Time-lapse gallery from Photoblog

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Greatest solar eclipse hits

Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis

See stunning images from past solar eclipses going back to the 1920s.

Launch slideshow

If you can't make it to the South Pacific's eclipse zone in time to watch the sun turn into a "ring of fire" on Thursday, you can still get in on the spectacle online.

The annular solar eclipse begins at 6:30 p.m. ET (22:30 GMT) in western Australia. Over the course of several hours, the moon's shadow will sweep across Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Pacific from east to west, fading into the sunset off the coast of South America.

Because of the relative position of moon, sun and Earth, the moon can't cover the sun's disk completely. For observers who are situated within a strip of Earth's surface that measures 100 to 140 miles (171 to 225 kilometers) wide and thousands of miles long, only the outer edge of the sun will remain uncovered. That's what produces the eerie ring of fire.

The sight will be much like what was visible during last May's annular solar eclipse, and the course of the eclipse will be similar to the Pacific path that was taken by the moon's shadow during last November's total solar eclipse.

If you are in the zone for the ring of fire, be careful: Even that slim ring of sunshine packs enough of a punch to burn your eyes, and you'll need to take precautions. Those precautions can take the form of eclipse-viewing glasses or filters, or pinhole-camera rigs that let you view the eclipse indirectly.

Caution should be the watchword as well for those who can observe the eclipse's partial phase from a wide swath of the Pacific, ranging from New Zealand to Indonesia and Hawaii, as shown in the animation below. NASA's Eclipse website provides further details, including precise time schedules for the eclipse in a variety of locales.

If you're entirely outside the eclipse zone, you won't be so sorely tempted to gaze at the sun. Instead, you can enjoy totally safe views of the eclipse online. Click on the links below for a few of the options:

Slooh Space Camera: Slooh's coverage begins at 5:30 p.m. ET, during the partial phase that leads up to annularity. Slooh's team will provide the commentary for live video feeds from Tennant Creek, Cape Melville National Park and Cairns in Australia. The show also will feature occasional shots of the unsullied sun from Arizona's Prescott Observatory. You can use a Web browser or Slooh's iPad app to tune in.

Coca-Cola Space Science Center: The Georgia-based center will provide a live video feed from Australia's Cape York starting at 5 p.m. ET.

Amateur webcams: Australian skywatcher Gerard Lazarus is gearing up to capture live video of the eclipse, and there may be other on-the-fly feeds. Follow the Twitter hashtag #ASE2013 for updates. 

Television Down Under: The eclipse is likely to make news Down Under, and it's worth checking Sky News Australia and 3News in New Zealand for TV coverage.

If you miss it: Check SpaceWeather.com, Space.com and Universe Today for images of the eclipse after it takes place. You'll also want to keep tabs on Geoff Sims (@beyond_beneath) and Colin Legg (@colinleggphoto) on Twitter.

If you catch it: Got pictures? Please feel free to share 'em with us via NBCNews.com's FirstPerson photo upload page, and we'll pass along a selection of eclipse pics.

More about the eclipse:

• All about the 'ring of fire' eclipse
• Australia to see second solar eclipse in six months
• Flash interactive: What causes a solar eclipse?

Tip o' the Log to Michael Zeiler and Amanda Bauer for eclipse tips.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

"Astronaut Abby" is at the controls of a social-media machine that is launching the 15-year-old from Minnesota to Kazakhstan this month for the liftoff of the International Space Station's next crew — and if Facebook and Twitter count for anything, it just might get her to Mars someday.

Abigail Harrison says she's always dreamed of being the first astronaut to set foot on the Red Planet, and she sees her campaign to get involved in space station outreach as one giant leap toward that target. 

She has enlisted one of the crew members, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, as her mentor and orbital pen pal. Her Rockethub crowdfunding campaign has passed the $20,000 mark and is shooting for a goal of $35,000 for travel and outreach. As the May 28 date for Parmitano's launch approaches, she's juggling radio interviews, Facebook updates, Twitter thank-you notes, public appearances ... and oh, that's right: high school.

"You can run yourself ragged on a campaign like this," Harrison, a sophomore at South High School in Minneapolis, told NBC News. "Last time I checked, I have seven A's this quarter. It's been harder to keep my grades up. I don't have as much free time to relax."

Somehow, Astronaut Abby manages. It doesn't hurt that her mom is a social-media maven who runs a marketing agency as @SocialNicole. "My mom has been an amazing resource to answer my questions and help me learn things during this campaign that I wouldn't have been able to learn myself," Harrison said. She also has corporate sponsors, graphic designers and public relations types on her side to keep the mission on track. But her key space connection is with Parmitano — and for that, Harrison has her mom and social media to thank.

The teenager has been an avid space fan since she was 6 or so. Two years ago, she and her mother traveled to NASA's Kennedy Space Center to see the final launch of the shuttle Endeavour. @SocialNicole participated in the mission's Tweetup, which gave a select group of Twitter users the opportunity to meet with NASA officials and astronauts, including Parmitano. She had a chat with the Italian, talked up her daughter and said she hoped they'd meet someday.

"Coming back through the airport, my mom and I turn around at security, and Luca was standing right behind us," Abby recalled. That was the beginning of a friendship that resulted in the #SoyuzAdventure outreach project.

"I will mentor you now," Parmitano told her, "and someday I will train you for your mission to Mars."

Harrison will be attending the Soyuz launch at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as Parmitano's guest, and she plans to send back dispatches about her travels. During Parmitano's six-month mission on the space station, Astronaut Abby will be checking in on a daily basis as the astronaut's "Earth Liaison." She'll pass along what she finds out via email blasts, blog items, Facebook updates, Twitter tweets and maybe even the occasional Google+ Hangout.

The contributions she's received so far will pay for the trip to Baikonur, and she'll scale her education and outreach efforts to fit her funding.

This may not sound like the traditional path toward an astronaut career, but maybe it's the wave of the future. "It's definitely been a learning process to step away from the idea that being an astronaut is more than just math and science," Harrison said. She still has a passion for science — particularly for biology and geology. And she still has a passion to be among the first to walk on Mars. "I have a saying, 'Mars or Bust, 2030,'" she said. But she also has a passion for social interaction, and she has learned from Parmitano to work that into her career plans as well.

"Do what you love, not what you think NASA is looking for," she quoted her mentor as saying, "because NASA is looking for people who are passionate about what they do."

In 2030, Astronaut Abby will be 32 years old — which is how old Sally Ride was when she became America's first woman in space. That sounds just about right. 

More about students and space:

• NASA to launch student-built radiation shield
• Mars project is a whole new world for kids
• Students help NASA control robots from space

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Space Warps Collaboration

The green crosshairs pinpoint a gravitational lens lurking in an astronomical image.

Think you can find space warps? Astronomers have recruited thousands of citizen scientists to look for exoplanets, galaxies, moon craters and other cosmic curiosities — and now they need your help to go after one of the weirdest phenomena in space-time: gravitational lenses.

The Space Warps website gives Internet users the opportunity to sift through telescope images and spot galaxies so massive they bend the light rays that pass near them, like a lens. The venture could help crack some of the secrets of dark matter, the mysterious cosmic stuff that is more plentiful than the ordinary matter we see around us.

"Not only do space warps act like lenses, magnifying the distant galaxies behind them, but we can also use the light they distort to weigh them, helping us to figure out how much dark matter they contain and how it’s distributed," Oxford University physicist Phil Marshall, one of the leaders of the Space Warps research team, said in Wednesday's kickoff announcement.  "Gravitational lenses help us to answer all kinds of questions about galaxies, including how many very low-mass stars such as brown dwarfs — which aren’t bright enough to detect directly in many observations — are lurking in distant galaxies."

Space Warps is the latest gem in Zooniverse's constellation of online citizen-science ventures — a constellation that also includes Planet Hunters, Galaxy Zoo, Moon Zoo and much, much more. The warp-hunting effort follows the model set by those other projects: Participants are given online training exercises to sharpen their lens-spotting skills, and then they're set loose to check sky survey images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

"Computer algorithms have already scanned the images from the CFHT survey, but there are likely to be many more space warps that the algorithms have missed. Realistic simulated space warps are dropped into some images to train the volunteers how to spot them, and reassure people that they are on the right track,’ said Anupreeta More, project co-leader from Kavli IPMU in Tokyo.

Galaxy Zoo already has demonstrated that human eyes and brains are much better than automated computer software when it comes to recognizing the subtle characteristics of astronomical phenomena. Dozens of scientific papers have been spun off from Galaxy Zoo searches — including reports on the headline-grabbing blob of green gas known as "Hanny's Voorwerp."

Space Warps could well uncover similar curiosities. Warp-hunters will be able to discuss their finds with each other and with experts on the project's online forum, and even create computer models of their discoveries. A list of gravitational lenses will be published for amateurs and professionals to investigate further.  

"Even if individual visitors only spend a few minutes glancing over 40 or so images each, that's really helpful to our research — we only need a handful of people to spot something in an image for us to say that it's worth investigating," said Oxford's Aprajita Verma, another leader of the Space Warps team.

So what are you waiting for?

More about gravitational lenses:

• Cosmic lenses find farthest galaxy yet
• Crazy cosmic lens focuses on dark matter
• Dark energy illuminated by cosmic lens

The Space Warps collaboration currently includes Phil Marshall, Aprajita Verma, Matthias Tecza, Chris Lintott, Rob Simpson (University of Oxford), Anupreeta More, Surhud More (Kavli IPMU), Amit Kapadia, Kelly Borden, David Miller, Arfon Smith (Adler Planetarium), Jean-Paul Kneib (EPFL Lausanne), Rafael Kueng, Prasenjit Saha (University of Zurich), and citizen scientists Elisabeth Baeten, Claude Cornen, Cecile Faure, Thomas Jennings, Stuart Lowe, Christine Macmillan, Julianne Wilcox and Layne Wright. Organizers say it is about to get a lot bigger.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A mosaic of images captured by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover on Sol 262 of its mission on Mars (May 2) shows its robotic arm in the foreground and Mount Sharp in the background. Two drill holes can be seen on the surface of the bedrock visible below the robotic arm's turret.

NASA's Curiosity rover is back at work in Yellowknife Bay, a rocky area inside Mars' Gale Crater — and if it takes good care of itself, it just might still be at work when humans hit the Red Planet.

At least that's the sentiment voiced by Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, during this week's Humans to Mars Summit in Washington. "I anticipate the first astronaut we send can go and shake Curiosity's hand," he told Monday's audience at George Washington University. If that astronaut is able to come within hand-shaking distance, the gesture would serve as a thank-you for years of service by the nuclear-powered robot, Meyer said.

Last week, Curiosity resumed contact with controllers back at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after a weeks-long gap that was scheduled due to solar interference — and JPL has just finished upgrading the rover's software.

Images sent back on May 2 show the rover's robotic arm and its instrument-laden turret poised over Yellowknife Bay's bedrock. Scientist-writer Ken Kremer and his Italian colleague, Marco Di Lorenzo, assembled 13 images ("a Martian baker's dozen") into the sepia-toned panorama you see above.

"She's back and flexing!" Kremer wrote in an email. 

Within a week or so, the rover will be drilling into Martian bedrock to flesh out its scientific findings about the habitability of ancient Mars. Then it'll start heading toward Mount Sharp (a.k.a. Aeolis Mons), a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain in Gale Crater. Scientists are hoping that the layers of rock on that mountainside have recorded billions of years' worth of geological changes.

Because Curiosity is powered by a plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the rover could keep going for decades — assuming that there aren't any mechanical breakdowns, of course. That's what fuels Meyer's hope that there'll be a human-machine handshake someday.

More than 70 percent of Americans are confident that humans will go to Mars by 2033, according to a survey conducted in February by Phillips & Company for the Boeing Co. and Explore Mars, the nonprofit group sponsoring this week's summit. But one of the summit's headliners, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, said that sending astronauts to Mars can't be done without technological innovation and financial support.

"I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready," The Washington Post quoted Bolden as saying. "I don’t have the capability to do it. NASA doesn’t have the capability to do that right now. But we’re on a path to be able to do it in the 2030s."

Will humans ever shake Curiosity's hand? When? Register your opinion in our unscientific survey above, and voice your views in the comment section below.

More about sending humans to Mars:

• Thousands want to take one-way trip to Mars
• Mars flyby in 2018? It's so crazy it just might work
• NBC News archive on Mars

You can follow the Humans to Mars Summit via streaming video. Check out Explore Mars' channel on Livestream for on-demand videos from Monday's sessions, plus live coverage of Tuesday's sessions.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

A Martian view from one of Curiosity's hazard avoidance cameras, transmitted back to Earth on Thursday, shows the shadow of the instrument turret on the rover's robotic arm.

NASA's Curiosity rover is back in business after a weeks-long communication gap caused by solar interference. The proof comes in the form of pictures transmitted back to Earth on Thursday from the 1-ton machine's vantage point at Yellowknife Bay on Mars.

"Can you hear me now? Conjunction is over. I have a clear view of Earth & am back to work!" the rover tweeted (with a little help from her entourage at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

Dozens of raw images are on display on NASA's Mars Curiosity website, featuring rocky terrain in the foreground and the 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) peak known as Mount Sharp or Aeolis Mons in the background. Other Mars probes, including the Opportunity rover, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, are back at work as well.

NASA's Red Planet probes were on hiatus for most of April due to an unfavorable alignment of Mars, Earth and the sun. During solar conjunction, the sun gets in the way of the communication lines between the two planets, and mission controllers generally put science operations on hold. Such conjunctions occur every 26 months. Opportunity has gone through several communication breaks during its nine years on Mars, but this is the first one to occur since Curiosity landed last August.

The spacecraft weren't completely idle during the break: Curiosity conducted in-place investigations and sent back limited transmissions via X-band radio to let controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory know that it was doing OK. Opportunity autonomously flipped its computer into safe mode during the break, apparently due to a glitch involving a routine camera check. A fresh set of software commands fixed the glitch, and on Wednesday controllers reported that Opportunity was back in working order.

Curiosity is due for its own software upgrade, and then the rover is scheduled to drill out a second sample of ground-up rock for analysis. The first sample, analyzed in March, suggested that the Yellowknife Bay environment was potentially habitable billions of years ago. Scientists want to use the follow-up sample to confirm what they saw in previous chemical analyses.

After Curiosity finishes up its work in Yellowknife Bay and its surroundings in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater, controllers plan to point the rover toward Mount Sharp, 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. The science team suspects that the mountain's many layers of rock will hold further evidence of ancient organic chemistry.

More about Mars:

• Cosmic Log archive on Curiosity
• Old phallic picture on Mars sparks new titters
• NASA lets poets send haiku to Red Planet

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / GSFC

The MAVEN orbiter, shown in this artist's conception, is to be launched toward Mars in November. NASA is taking names that will be digitized for inclusion on the spacecraft.

Poets, take note: NASA is looking for a few good haiku to send to the Red Planet aboard its MAVEN orbiter this fall.

If you're not the literary sort, don't worry: You can still submit your name to be included on a DVD that will be attached to the spacecraft. MAVEN is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida sometime after Nov. 18. In 2014, it'll go into Martian orbit to study changes in the planet's atmosphere over the course of at least one Earth year. Mission cost is $670 million. MAVEN is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN.

Send-a-name opportunities come around at least once every year or so, and they tend to be quite popular with the general public. More than 1.2 million names were collected for the Mars Science Laboratory mission: Those names were etched onto two microchips, each the size of a dime, and then the chips were placed in a protected corner of the Curiosity rover.

This time around, you can submit names via the MAVEN mission's "Going to Mars" website. All the names will be digitized and encoded onto a DVD that will be put on the spacecraft. You can also submit a personal message in the form of a haiku — a traditional form of three-line Japanese verse that has five syllables for the first line, seven syllables for the second line, and five syllables for the third line.

The deadline for submissions is July 1. An online public vote will be conducted beginning July 15 to select the top three haiku poems. Those three poems will be included on the spacecraft as well, and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website. Check the "Going to Mars" instructions to get the details and to register your name and message.

"The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration, and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission," Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said in a NASA news release announcing the campaign. To put it another way:

Space exploration
blends science and poetry,
blends heaven and earth. 

More about future space missions:

• MAVEN mission prepped for launch
• NASA plans 2020 Mars rover remake
• 13 new space missions for 2013

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor (and was editor of his college's literary magazine more than three decades ago). Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.