In case you missed it, Elon Musk’s SpaceX program successfully docked with the International Space Station, a first for a non-governmental vehicle, early this morning, and what a momentous occasion it was.

Think about it, up until the past few years, space travel in the United States was for NASA only. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll be able to take trips to space as a casual passenger. Sign me up, because it’s a lifelong dream of mine.

The opening of the hatch that connected the space station and the SpaceX Dragon is right up there with the first step on the moon, in my opinion. Watch the team get its first glimpse of the Dragon:

The hatch between the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the Harmony module of the International Space Station was opened by NASA Astronaut Don Pettit at 5:53 am EDT as the station flew 253 miles above Auckland, New Zealand. The hatch opening begins four days of operations to upload more than 1,000 pounds of cargo from the first commercial spacecraft to visit the space station and reload it with experiments and cargo for a return trip to Earth. It is scheduled for splashdown several hundred miles west of California on May 31.

Wow.

You only have one shot to catch the solar eclipse on May 20th, or you’ll have to wait until next year. Thanks to technology, and some help from NASA, you can now get the heads up on the exact path of the upcoming Instagram-worthy event.

The organization has posted a really cool map that tracks the entire solar eclipse, so that you can plan on where to be and when to be:

This map shows the path of the Annular Solar Eclipse of 2012 May 20. The northern and southern path limits are blue and the central line is red. The yellow lines crossing the path indicate the position of maximum eclipse at 10-minute intervals.

Choose the Large Map check box to produce a bigger map (for users with large monitors and fast internet connections). For more information, see Google Eclipse Map Instructions.

If you’re a space and geography nerd like I am, seeing ridiculous amounts of data packed into a pretty map like this is your dream.

Be sure to head on over to NASA’s site to see the map in its full interactive glory.

The ‘codeathon’ brought event together citizens who wanted to collectively address critical challenges. The idea is to use minimal resources to compete with other teams around the world, utilizing publicly available space and data to design innovative “solutions” to a pre-determined series of global “challenges.” In NASA’s case this took part across all continents and even in space on the International Space Station.

We stopped by the San Francisco codeathon taking part at Techshop and spoke to astronaut Ron Garan, and Willow Brugh from Geeks Without Bounds - SF’s location lead, about their involvement with the project. You can check out the 200 + solutions here.

Today is the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s historic Mercury flight that saw the first American to orbit the Earth. The entire “Friendship 7″ flight took 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds and played a huge role in NASA’s mission to be the world’s leader in space flight.

It’s been exactly fifty years since the flight and NASA is commemorating the day with the launch of an interactive site and documentary about the mission.

The site itself is entirely in flash and serves as an interactive tutorial about the mission, complete with 360 degree tour of the capsule that took John Glenn around the globe:

The site also includes some intimate photos from the day of the flight, and probably requires more computing power to run than the actual mission did in its entirety. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.

The documentary that goes along with the site is about 25 minutes long and includes interviews with surviving members of mission control as well as with John Glenn himself:

NASA continues to pump out amazing content on its history which plays a huge role in keeping this generation excited about everything that has been left undiscovered in space.

50th Anniversary of John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Flight

NASA might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to playing games on Facebook, but the space agency has dipped its toe into uncharted territory yet again today.

If you’re a space nut or would like to learn more about the history of the space program, the multi-player Facebook game “Space Race Blastoff” from NASA might be right up your alley. Multi-player games are perfect for Facebook since it’s easy to get a friend or two involved. You might want to play it with people you don’t know at first to save yourself from embarrassment, as I did.

The three player game asks you a series of multiple choice questions about everything that has ever happened in the space program, bundled with science and math questions. This is a great game for the kids to play.

NASA has done extremely well on social networks, with a massive following on Google+ and Twitter. The government-funded agency has released a series of apps sharing photos from space as well as live video of launch events as well. This latest Facebook game is yet another move to expand its footprint on the web.

Here’s what associate administrator for communications at NASA, David Weaver, had to say about Space Race Blastoff:

Space Race Blastoff opens NASA’s history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media. Space experts and novices will learn new things about how exploration continues to impact our world.

There are leaderboards which will track your progress as you play the game with friends and strangers, earning you badges along the way for a job well done.

I’ve played the game five times and haven’t been asked any questions more than once, so it’s safe to say that a good chunk of the NASA archives have been converted into questions for the game. It will be interesting to see if this game gets the attention of other government agencies who are trying to connect to a younger crowd to engage and educate them. Facebook is a perfect place to get started, and quite a public one too, so be sure to do your homework before playing.

Space Race Blastoff on Facebook

We like to nerd out here at The Next Web, which often means keeping up with black holes, interstellar space travel, extraterrestrial life and NASA shuttle launches. Which is why I’m excited that one of my favorite sites, Space.com, just got a shiny new update.

The site’s re-design includes better graphics and the addition of a suite of social sharing and community tools. Their social media campaign integrates their Twitter and Facebook page and encourages users to play space trivia games, engage with astronauts and keep up with space events. Their new site boasted a total of 19 million monthly page views in December. For a science site, they’re pretty social media savvy, letting users log-in with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, MySpace, AOL, MSN Messenger, Google, OpenID and others.

“It’s not just the trekkies anymore who care about outer space,” said Jerry Ropelato CEO of SPACE.com and its parent company TechMediaNetwork. “Whether water discovered on the moon, an eclipse, NASA and shuttle expeditions, Space has become part of our regular news consumption and we’re complementing our digital news content to appeal to this growing audience of space enthusiasts,” Ropelato continued.

Among SPACE.com’s advertisers are AT&T, Verizon, American Express, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Buick and Sprint, joined by new advertisers ABC Television’s “V” and Toyota.