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Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 862

Jun 6, 2018

NASA is announcing a new discovery from Mars on Thursday — here’s how to watch it live

Posted by in categories: climatology, space

Here’s how to watch the announcement live.


NASA’s Curiosity Rover has found some new and exciting information about Mars, and the space agency is announcing that discovery to the world on Thursday.

The Curiosity Rover launched from Earth in November 2011 and landed on Martian soil on August 6, 2012. It has since been cruising around the red planet’s surface, functioning as a 9-foot-wide roving science machine.

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Jun 6, 2018

Vela X-1 is plowing its way through the galaxy

Posted by in categories: energy, space

Every now and again you run into an astronomical object where everything about it is mind blowing. And I get to share it with you! Let me introduce you to a binary star that will crush your imagination and make you realize the Universe is way cooler than you knew.

A few million years ago, and 6,000 light years from Earth, two stars were born out of the gas and dust in the galaxy in a cluster with many other stars. These two formed together, so close their mutual and growing gravity bound them together, forcing them to orbit one another. And they grew huge: By the time they switched on and became true stars, they each had more than two dozen times the mass of the Sun.

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Jun 6, 2018

Is It Time To Work With China In Space?

Posted by in category: space

Keith’s note: China is getting ready to launch a new space station which, when complete, will be on par with Mir with many capabilities similar to those offered by the ISS. China is openly seeking governmental and commercial participation. Meanwhile they are about to land a rover on the far side of the Moon as part of a methodical plan to land humans there.

Meanwhile NASA is trying to rid itself of the ISS through various half-hearted efforts to commercialize this amazing resource that rely on smoke and mirrors and faith-based funding plans. NASA is also puffing itself up again for the third time in less than 20 years to #GoBackToTheMoon or something with budgets that do not come close to making such a thing possible. Oh by the way #JourneyToMars is still on the books.

One would think that the prudent thing would be to leverage our interests with those of China as we have done with Russia and many other nations around the world. But short-sighted legislation and targeted xenophobia currently prevents this.

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Jun 5, 2018

NASA will make a major announcement about Mars this week

Posted by in category: space

What would it be?

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Jun 4, 2018

Nonprofit Wants to Map Lunar Heritage Sites Using Blockchain

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, finance, law, space

Yellowstone National Park, The Dolomites, Auschwitz Birkenau, The Great Wall … Apollo 11’s Tranquility Base?

For All Moonkind and TODAQ Financial have teamed up to map heritage sites on the Moon—using blockchain.

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Jun 4, 2018

The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Makes Tracks on Magical Mystery Tour of Different Rocks

Posted by in categories: habitats, robotics/AI, space

Update from a space robot rolling around Mars!


Sols 5073–5102

Opportunity continued exploring the south trough of Perseverance in May, still looking for evidence that explains just how this one-of-a-kind valley meandering through Endeavour Crater’s rim formed, and, along the way, helped the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission chalk up yet another first, linking with three relay orbiters in one Martian day or sol to send a pipeline of data home.

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Jun 4, 2018

China to build a new space station as ISS faces investment woes

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

As the International Space Station (ISS) faces future funding cutbacks, China has jumped into the fray with off-world plans of its own.

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Jun 4, 2018

Advancing astronomy one laser at a time

Posted by in category: space

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory, Chile, is the world’s most advanced optical instrument. The VLT uses state-of-the-art technology to provide the sharpest possible images, including adaptive optics with the laser guide stars shown in this image. The VLT uses these lasers to measure the turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere, and responds by changing the shape of a mirror to counteract the negative effects of this turbulence.

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Jun 3, 2018

Hubble Spots a Green Cosmic Arc

Posted by in categories: physics, space

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a cluster of hundreds of galaxies located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth. The brightest galaxy within this cluster, named SDSS J1156+1911, is visible in the lower middle of the frame. It was discovered by the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey, which studied data maps covering huge parts of the sky from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The survey found more than 70 galaxies that look to be significantly affected by a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

Gravitational lensing is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The mass contained within a galaxy is so immense that it can actually warp and bend the very fabric of its surroundings (known as space-time), forcing light to travel along curved paths. As a result, the image of a more distant galaxy appears distorted and amplified to an observer, as the light from it has been bent around the intervening galaxy. This effect can be very useful in astronomy, allowing astronomers to see galaxies that are either obscured or too distant to be otherwise detected by our current instruments.

Galaxy clusters are giant structures containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies, some with masses over one million billion times the mass of the Sun! SDSS J1156+1911 is only roughly 600 billion times the mass of the Sun, making it less massive than the average galaxy. However, it is massive enough to produce the fuzzy, greenish streak seen just below the brightest galaxy — the lensed image of a more distant galaxy.

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Jun 3, 2018

Radioisotope Positron Propulsion

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space

Ryan Weed Positron Dynamics.

Current state of the art in-space propulsion systems based on chemical or ion propellants fail to meet requirements of 21st century space missions. Antimatter is a candidate mechanism for a propulsion system that could transport humans and/or robotic systems with drastically reduced transit times, providing quicker scientific results, increasing the payload mass to allow more capable instruments and larger crews, and reducing the overall mission cost. Unfortunately, previous propulsion concepts relied on unrealistic amounts of trapped antimatter — orders of magnitude away from any near-term capability. The goal of this effort is to determine the feasibility of a (TRL 1–2) radioisotope positron catalyzed fusion propulsion concept that does not rely on trapped antimatter. Such a transformative technology inspires and drives further innovation within the aerospace community and can be applied to a relevant mission — the bulk retrieval of an entire asteroid into translunar space — a mission of great scientific and commercial interest (e.g. asteroid mining). The idea of harnessing resources from asteroids goes back more than a century to Tsiolkovsky. Fundamentally, for asteroid mining to become financially viable, the cost of the retrieval spacecraft must be less than the value gained from the asteroid. Therefore, developing technology (e.g. efficient propulsion systems) that decreases the mass and complexity of the retrieval spacecraft must be a priority.

Editor: Loura Hall

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