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First Commercial SpaceShipTwo Flight Is Expected to Launch This Year

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson aims to fly to space on the first-ever commercial SpaceShipTwo flight in mid-2019.

On Thursday, Branson spoke about SpaceShipTwo on the CBS This Morning TV show, and how Virgin Galactic is collaborating with Under Armour to equip future astronauts with proper space attire and footwear, SpaceNews.com reported. During the interview, Branson said Virgin Galactic is conducting additional tests for the first commercial SpaceShipTwo flight, which is expected to take place later this year.

How soon do you see people in space wearing an @UnderArmour outfit?

Hubble’s deepest space image ever was three years in the making

The Hubble space telescope has been in space for many years now. Of late it has had some challenges, including one that left its W ide Field Camera 3 non-functional for a while. Hubble is back at work, and scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias have shared a new image that took three years to produce. The photo is the deepest image of the Universe ever taken from space.

Vajrayana Buddhism: Preparation for the Posthuman?

The Vajra (thunderbolt) tradition goes back at least to Amen of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. It passes on through thunderbolt-wielding Zeus/ Jupiter; and is also found in India and Tibet in the Vajrayana (Tantra) tradition. Tantra entails the study of all relevant traditions to determine the best. It contradicts neither science or religion. This C19th Tibetan tsakli is from a group of five Vajragarudas. Several ancient Egyptian emblems that survive in tsakli are given in Hypermodern Magick/ Khemetic Chess (Vol 2 of 3, Mandrake of Oxford series). This type of Buddhism seems particularly suitable for radical futurists.

First geoengineering experiment to dim the sun on track for 2019

© Getty Harvard scientists will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment set for early 2019.

The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) will inject calcium carbonate particles high above the earth in an attempt to reflect some of the sun’s rays back into space.

It will likely mark the first time the controversial concept of dimming the sun — more scientifically known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) — will be tested in the real world.

From fruit flies to Boy Scouts: A brief history of science in space

The formal handover of the Chinese payload to NanoRacks at the Space Life Sciences Lab in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo credit: NanoRacks.

Small effort, big gains

Clearly, a lot of progress has been made toward making the space lab more analogous to the Earth lab in the past few years, and NanoRacks has played no small part in those improvements. Despite the challenges that still remain for microgravity research, some truly significant work has been accomplished. With just a little more investment, Carruthers believes, much larger gains can be made.