During the space shuttle Atlantis' activities in orbit, I've been watching NASA tv a lot. Some very cool stuff to see and hear. In fact the whole concept of TV from outside this world is something I like a fair deal.
The most refreshing part of it all, though, is NASA's apparent general attitude to openness: they will let you see everything the astronauts and ground crew are doing, hear everything they radio to eachother, and will tell you in detail what's up if you happen to be in the position of being able to ask. They also provide high-resolution imagery (highest they can generate, in fact) of pretty much everything there is to see. And while that alone is a very nice thing to do, it gets even better: all NASA's images are explicitly not protected by copyright. Only exceptions are NASA logos and such, but if you make a toy space shuttle and want to slap a logo on it, they'll usually give permission for that.
In today's world, most of this doesn't happen too much. I'm glad to see some people still get it right.
So for some non-copyright-protected images from and about space exploration, now and in the past, have a browse at Great Images in NASA (GRIN). All in good humour, too:
