Lifeboat Foundation

The agency just threw up to $4 million towards experimental space exploration technologies.

Getting ready to send the robots to Space on an AI Spaceship; perfect for that trip to Mars, Jupiter, etc.

DARPA will soon build and relase their first space shuttle without a pilot.

Continue reading “DARPA News Update: To Build the First Space Shuttle Without A Pilot Known as the ‘Experimental Spaceplane’” »

Absolutely beautiful animation.

Where do I sign up to be ON one of those?! wink

I want to know more about the world in this short animation Entropy, by Tim Cahn. I want to know why the spaceship is leaving Earth. I want to know what the space station is doing all the way out there. I want to know who’s there. I want to know where the ship is headed. I want to live in this world. But in the stillness of the short, we only get to see the beautiful imagery of a spaceship leaving Earth, so we have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

Continue reading “Gorgeous Animation Shows a Spaceship Mysteriously Traveling to a Universe Beyond” »

We knew this was going to happen. Just still neat to read about it.

(Phys.org) —NASA is planning to launch a milestone experiment involving growing plants on the moon. The target date is 2015, when the agency will deposit plants on the moon’s surface. The initiative is being driven by the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team. They intend to use coffee-can sized containers designed to protect the plants against harsh elements of the climate, and will also provide cameras, sensors, and electronics in order to relay information about how the plants fare back to earth. NASA’s plan is “to develop a very simple sealed growth chamber that can support germination over a five to-ten day period in a spacecraft on the Moon.”

What will NASA try to grow? The containers will attempt to grow turnip, basil and Arabidopsis The latter is used often in plant research; Simon Gilroy, University of Wisconsin-Madison botany professor, has referred to the Arabidopsis as “the lab rat of plant biology.” Will the life forms survive the lunar surface? NASA’s plan is to find some answers when this “self-contained habitat,” which will have a mass of about 1 kg and would be a payload on a commercial lunar lander, is on the moon, How it gets there is another interesting side of the story, because NASA is taking advantage of a parallel event to save costs significantly.

Continue reading “Can plants grow on the moon? NASA plans test in 2015” »

Breakthrough Starshot aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to astronomy, including solar system exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.

Breakthrough Starshot is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled nanocrafts. These could fly at 20 percent of light speed and capture images of possible planets and other scientific data in our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, just over 20 years after their launch.

Nextbigfuture covered the project last month when it was announced. Here is more information from the Breakthrough Initiative website.

Continue reading “Starshot Breakthrough Initiative for laser pushed interstellar nanocraft” »

Besides it not being a true space vehicle, XS-1 will be notable because it’ll be a drone, a robot space ship.

It will launch itself to the edge of space (basically 100 kilometers up there) and release its payload into LEO. It’s being called a plane because it’ll take-off and land like a plane on every mission.

DARPA’s toy will then be refueled and launched again. DARPA wants its space plane to be so reliable it can fly “10 times in 10 days.” DARPA expects the cost of a space plane flight to come to a measly $5 million compared to the $450 million once spent to launch a space shuttle.

Continue reading “DARPA Robot Space Plane will replace the Space Shuttle” »

Despite the fact that they’re still unsure of how it works exactly, NASA scientists have confirmed once again that the seemingly impossible EmDrive is legit.

Hydro powered spacecraft to be the first to mine an astroid.

A few months back, Luxembourg—a tiny country better known for world-class pastries— announced its intention to become a leader in asteroid mining. Now, Luxembourg has revealed the first step in its plan to fill the banking vaults with space-grade platinum: a small, water-powered spacecraft.

http://gizmodo.com/luxembourg-wants-to-be-a-world-leader-in-…1756860361

Continue reading “A Tiny, Water-Powered Spacecraft Could Be the First to Mine Asteroids” »

Still trying to figure out how Luxembourg got a space program.

(AFP) Luxembourg has staked its claim to the final frontier with an ambitious plan to profit from the mining of asteroids, the government said Thursday.

The Grand Duchy has joined forces with American company Deep Space Industries (DSI) to cash in on the wealth of natural resources thought to exist on asteroids.

Continue reading “Luxembourg reaches for the stars with asteroid mining deal” »