Midwinter Festival celebrations on the Space Station

NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore (left) floats with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (center) and NASA's Terry Virts (right) are decked out for Christmas 2014.

Credit: Sam Cristoforetti Twitter/ESA

Astronauts in space have decked the halls of the International Space Station in honour of the holiday season.

The international crew members on the station have hung stockings, pulled out the orbiting outpost's Christmas tree, and they generally seem to be getting into the Christmas spirit.

European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti even sent out a picture of her with NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Barry "Butch" Wilmore with their decorations on the station.

"It's beginning to look like Christmas on the International Space Station," NASA officials wrote on a blog about the holiday.

"The stockings are out, the tree is up and the station residents continue advanced space research to benefit life on Earth and in space."

Space Station Christmas decorationsPin It ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti decorates the International Space Station for Christmas 2014.

Credit: NASA

Although NASA astronauts usually get the day off for Christmas, they have still been taking part in a variety of experiments leading up to the holiday.

On Dec. 23, for example, the crewmembers participated in a neurology experiment to monitor how motor control, perception and other aspects of brain function change over time in space, according to NASA.

In addition to Wilmore, Virts and Cristoforetti, the station's cre includes Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov.

People on Earth can also send holiday messages of cheer to astronauts in space this season. NASA has set up a special portal for Earthlings that want to send their greetings to Virts and Wilmore on the station.

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Deployed by Space Shuttle Crew Fifteen Years Ago

Image Credit: NASA

On July 23, 1999, a little more than seven hours after Space Shuttle Columbia and its five astronauts were launched from the Kennedy Space Center, NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory was successfully deployed by the STS-93 crew.

Chandra was spring-ejected from a cradle in the shuttle’s cargo bay at 6:47 a.m. Central time, as Columbia flew over the Indonesian island chain.

Inertial Upper Stage (IUS)

Commander Eileen Collins, the first female Shuttle Commander, maneuvered Columbia to a safe distance away from the telescope as an internal timer counted down to the first of a two-phase ignition of the solid-fuel Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).

The IUS lit up as scheduled at 7:47 a.m., and a few minutes later, shut down as planned, sending Chandra on a highly elliptical orbit which was refined over the next few weeks by a series of firings of telescope thrusters, designed to place Chandra in an orbit about 6900 x 87,000 statute miles above the Earth.

Since its deployment, Chandra has helped revolutionise our understanding of the universe through its unrivaled X-ray vision.

Chandra, one of NASA's current "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, is specially designed to detect X-ray emission from hot and energetic regions of the universe.

In this photograph, the five STS-93 astronauts pose for the traditional inflight crew portrait on Columbia's middeck.

In front are astronauts Eileen Collins, mission commander, and Michel Tognini, mission specialist representing France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).

Behind them are (from the left) astronauts Steven A. Hawley, mission specialist; Jeffrey S. Ashby, pilot; and Catherine G. (Cady) Coleman, mission specialist.

In the background is a large poster depicting the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

CERN: LHC celebrates five years of not destroying the world

Universe’s secrets are revealed in a dark corner in Switzerland. Credit: timtom.ch

Five years ago, at breakfast time, the world waited anxiously for news from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The first nervy bunch of protons were due to be fired around the European lab's latest and biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as it kicked into action.

Some "mercifully deluded people" – as Jeremy Paxman put it – feared the LHC would do no end of mischief.

There was talk of planet-swallowing black holes, the transformation of the Earth into a new state of "strange" matter, and even the prospect of the obliteration of the entire universe.

But for those of more sensible dispositions, the LHC's first beam was an occasion for great excitement.

As the protons sped all the way round the 27km tunnel under the countryside between Lake Geneva and the Jura Mountains, thousands of physicists and engineers celebrated decades of hard work, incredible ingenuity and sheer ambition.

Lyn Evans

Together they had created the largest-ever scientific experiment. After the LHC was switched on, project leader Lyn Evans said, "We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe."

Operating a massive particle accelerator requires much more than flicking a switch – thousands of individual elements have to all come together, synchronised in time to less than a billionth of a second.

University College London's physicist Jon Butterworth recalls a "particularly bizarre memory" from that day.

Relaxing in a Westminster pub after an exhausting LHC event in London, Butterworth found he could follow live updates from his own ATLAS experiment on the pub's TV.

Particle physics continued to make news. The following fortnight's joy turned to dismay as an accident involving six tonnes of liquid helium erupting violently in the tunnel – euphemistically referred to as "the incident" – damaged around half a mile of the collider, closing the LHC for a year.

Water-Propelled Jet Pack: St Patrick's Day celebrations

A man dressed as a leprechaun entertains the crowd on a water-propelled jet pack while workers dye the Chicago River green 

Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images

ESA: Astronaut Andre Kuipers celebrations