Lifeboat Foundation

India’s space program wants to go where no nation has gone before -– to the south side of the moon. And once it gets there, it will study the potential for mining a source of waste-free nuclear energy that could be worth trillions of dollars.

ELON MUSK wants to plump humans on Mars by 2024 and the first batch of settlers could live in 3D-printed home pods that pack hologram computers.

You’ll be able to tour the Red Planet habitat in virtual reality and view a scale model of the sci-fi living space at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next month.

Ever wish you could visit other planets in our solar system without launching on a deep-space mission? Now you can embark on an interplanetary adventure right from the palm of your hand, thanks to gorgeous, 3D-printed planet models and an augmented-reality (AR) app.

Brought to you by AstroReality, the same company that created the “Lunar” AR moon model and its new Earth counterpart, this set includes miniature models of all eight planets and one model of the dwarf planet Pluto. Each model is 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) in diameter and color-printed with a resolution of 0.1 millimeter per pixel.

Continue reading “Explore the Solar System in Augmented Reality with Mini Planet Models” »

Friday morning at 5:24 am (0924 GMT), a rocket owned by the US company SpaceX will blast off from Florida carrying two and a half tons of gear from NASA, only to dock three days later and 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth at the International Space Station.

The rocket itself is not new. It launched a NASA satellite into orbit two months ago, then landed back on Earth—upright—on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral.

Even the Dragon capsule, carrying the cargo and affixed to the top of the rocket was used before, having flown a mission to the ISS in 2016.

After nearly four years of traveling through space, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused with the Ryugu asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed Wednesday. Let the next stage of this historic sampling-and-return mission begin!

Earlier today, mission controllers at JAXA triggered Hayabusa2’s chemical propulsion thrusters, bringing the spacecraft into orbit around Ryugu, an asteroid that’s just shy of one kilometer (0.6 miles) wide. Confirmation of the rendezvous was made at 9:35 am Japan Standard Time (JST). JAXA says Hayabusa2’s thrusters worked normally, and that the spacecraft is maintaining a constant distance from Ryugu.

Researchers have made a shocking discovery under the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica — an active volcanic heat source, which they say has played a “critical role” in the movement and melting of the glacier.

The scientists were looking at the role the ocean plays in causing glaciers to weaken when the discovery was made.

“We were looking to better understand the role of the ocean in melting the ice shelf,” Assistant Professor Brice Loose of Newport, R.I., a chemical oceanographer and lead author of the paper, said in a statement.

Continue reading “Antarctica’s big secret: Active volcanic heat found under Pine Island Glacier” »

The Mars-Home for Mission Specialists for next few months.Team includes India born Shawna Pandya

Representatives of Congress and the National Space Council joined President Donald J. Trump, Apollo astronaut Jack Schmitt and current NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson Monday, Dec. 11, 2017, for the president’s signing of Space Policy Directive 1, a change in national space policy that provides for a U.S.-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.

Lunar Sample 70215 was retrieved from the Moon’s surface and returned by NASA’s Apollo 17 crew. The sample is a basaltic lava rock similar to lava found in Hawaii. It crystallized 3.84 billion years ago when lava flowed from the Camelot Crater. Sliced off a parent rock that originally weighed 8,110 grams, the sample weighs 14 grams, and is very fine grained, dense and tough.

Continue reading “Will US Make it to Mars as President Trump Signs New Directive for NASA and Mission Gets Ready” »

So what’s the catch?

For one, iPSCs can take months to make and the process is expensive. Furthermore, reverting cells back to a stem cell state wipes out their history, which is sometimes useful for studying disease progression.

In essence, iPSCs are the middlemen between one cell type and another. What if we could simply take out the middleman altogether?

Continue reading “Transdifferentiation Can Create An Endless Supply of Brain Cells—And Fast” »