Within two years, the city of Chengdu aims to swap out its ground-based street lighting with the soft glow of an artificial moon, casting light across 50 square miles of the urban landscape.

Wu Chunfeng, chairman of Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute, announced the news at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event earlier this month.

Reflective panels on board the machine will pick up and redirect the sun’s rays. The satellite will actually glow multiple times brighter than the moon itself, creating a dusk-like atmosphere on demand. The precise illumination can be varied in different sections of the city as well.

The project may sound like a moonshot but it’s not without precedent: Soviets tested similar light-reflecting satellites decades ago, aimed to illuminate darker northern regions, and on the ground: cities in valleys have also been known to use giant reflectors perched on adjacent mountainsides.

This 23-foot scale model of the moon is making its way around the world, allowing viewers to get close and see the many facets of this amazing celestial object. Each centimeter on the replica represents 5 kilometers on the lunar surface.

Created by artist Luke Jerram, the Museum of the Moon is stopping in China, Finland, Australia and other countries to stop in exhibit spaces and outdoor venues.

The model was based on a 70-foot-wide image taken by NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera satellites and compiled by NASA’s Astrogeology Science Center.

While the moon is remarkable to see in the sky, without technical assistance (like a telescope) it is hard to make out the details — this model aims to change that.

“As it travels from place to place, it will gather new musical compositions and an ongoing collection of personal responses, stories and mythologies, as well as highlighting the latest moon science.” (Images by Carl Milner, Gareth Jones, Leeds Living, Neil James, via Colossal)

The Lunar Lander Home, inspired by the LM that took NASA’s Apollo astronauts to the Moon, is a visionary boat designer’s Space Age living space.

Most people like homes with lots of living space. Then there’s this guy, who’s taken the concept of “living space” to the next level… “living IN space”. Seattle-based boat designer Kurt Hughes of Multihull Design isn’t doing that literally (at least, not yet) so he’s built the next best thing: an earthbound “spaceship” house modeled after the Lunar Module or LM – the Apollo program’s bug-like moon landing/liftoff vehicle.

The 250-square-foot house sits on the banks of Washington state’s Columbia River and while it may not offer picture-postcard views of the Sea of Tranquility, this Space Age abode still manages to combine the best of both worlds. Speaking of rivers and seas, residents of what Hughes says is a prototype for a line of larger versions won’t live in fear of floods, as a trio of industrial-strength steel support beams raise the home nearly nine feet above ground level. Ingress and egress is via a ladder-like staircase so every beer run becomes one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.

Though much smaller than the average home, this eminently habitable habitat is the product of Hughes’ 35 years of experience in the marine building trade expressed through the filter of an abiding interest in practical architecture… and it’s the shape of things to come. “The mission is to build a line of habitable space landers providing creature comforts with low impact on the land and high amazement factor,” explains Hughes. We have no problem with that, Houston.

The prototype living space oddity’s location in rural Washington State is no coincidence: Apollo astronauts conducted wilderness survival training less than 25 miles away, 50-odd years ago. The home’s hexagonal floor plan is also inspired by the space program with the common goal in each case being optimal space efficiency. Thus, the usual composite cube house was a non-starter from the get-go even though, as Hughes explains, “it would be simpler, and not ‘weird’ looking. Easy. A cube is not interesting. Cube has been done before. Let’s explore something new. The Lunar Lander is not only an interesting configuration, but an homage to a time when people did new things. Innovators were prized, not feared.” If those aren’t the words of a man on a mission, we’ll eat 50-year-old astronaut ice cream.

Exploring the Lunar Lander House is an exercise in the physics of inner space. The open floor pan allows easy access to external modules containing a full bathroom, a compact kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a breakfast nook with porthole window, and a storage/pantry closet. The ceiling sports a transparent geodesic dome that acts as a skylight, illuminating the interior by day and negating the need for extensive electrical lighting. As too much of a good thing – light and heat, in this case – has its drawbacks, a composite foam & glass cover can be fitted beneath the skylight.

To make this house a home, Hughes has installed a luxuriously comfortable “lounging pit” and bed. The habitat even has an outdoor deck overlooking the river. All of the home’s functional systems and modular living space rest upon a main hexagonal support ring that allows for uncomplicated home movement at the owner’s convenience.

In addition, states Hughes, “the Lunar Lander (house) can rest comfortably on drastic, uneven terrain with virtually no environmental footprint.” Sorta like the actual LM though back then, NASA wasn’t concerned with environmental footprints – just those left by their astronauts. “These off-the-grid outposts will use the latest marine technology to afford a strong, light and easily maintained structure,” adds Hughes. Whatever floats your boat, dude… on sea OR land.

Starting with a model planet Earth the size of a marble, a team of filmmakers set out to simulate our entire solar system in motion and capture the results in a compelling short movie.

In normal images and models of the planets in our solar neighborhood, nothing is too scale – at scale on a piece of paper, planets becoming vanishingly small and effectively impossible to see on the page. Textbooks and other graphics misrepresent sizes almost by necessity simply because it would be impossible to depict things otherwise in a small visual field.

The resulting visuals distort our sense of the distance between celestial bodies. In the scale model featured above, set in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet give the viewer a much greater intuitive understanding of the separation and size of these spatial objects.

“As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart.” said James Irwin, Apollo 15 astronaut. He is one of only 24 people in human history have seen the full circle of the Earth with their own eyes.

Using LED lights, GPS calculations, a dirt disrupter and ultimately cars driving in circles to simulate the orbits at night, the team created a 1:847,638,000 scale model in which blips of light represent the various bodies in space.

One of the participants climbed a nearby mountain to film it all from above, while post-production overlays create a key for the video. Process documentation was made in part with a drone flying overhead. According to its creators, this is the first scale model of the solar system ever constructed.

A bizarre art installation based on a dream saw a 50-ft tall balloon become a bizarre “Man In The Moon” as it rose above the streets of Utsunomiya, Japan.

Residents of Utsunomiya, a smallish city roughly 60 miles (100 km) north of Tokyo, Japan, experienced the shock of their lives on the evening of December 13th, 2014 when they espied the full moon rising over the horizon.

No doubt dozens of necks suddenly snapped in a group double-take as residents suddenly realized that’s no moon… it’s the enormous inflated head of one of their neighbors!

Give credit to Japanese art trio Me (in collaboration with the Utsunomiya Museum of Art) for the uniquely unusual “Ojisora” project, an artistic effort spanning over two years from conception to realization. Its origin rests with one of the three artists, Haruka Kojin (above, right), who as a junior high school student dreamed of an old man’s grossly enlarged and disembodied head floating over town and country .

Upon awakening from her dream, Kojin quickly sketched her recollection and then just as quickly forgot about it. Many years later, she came across her sketch and wondered… was there some way to recreate her dream in real life? After consulting with her two co-artists and with the support of the Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Kojin took the first step towards realizing – and sharing on a mass scale – her odd dream from so many years before.

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Thats No Moon Artists Launch Huge Human Head Balloon