April 2017

Surveillance Sat Set for Sunday Sunrise SpaceX Blastoff and Landing Apr. 30 – Watch Live SpaceX Falcon 9 recycled rocket carrying SES-10 telecomsat raised erect atop Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center as seen from inside the pad ahead of liftoff on 30 Mar 2017 on world’s first reflight of an orbit class rocket, in this file photo. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – A classified surveillance for the nation’s spymasters is set for blastoff shortly after sunrise on Sunday, Apr. 30 by SpaceX in a space first by the firm founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk that also features aRead More →

LEGO Apollo Saturn V: Tallest LEGO Ideas Set Ever Made LEGO Saturn V in launch configuration. Credit: LEGO Yesterday LEGO announced that their new LEGO Apollo Saturn V set will be available to buy on June 1, 2017. And let me tell you, this thing is going to be a monster. In fact, it’ll be the tallest LEGO set ever made from their crowdsourced LEGO Ideas competition, with a total height of 1 meter (39 inches). It’s going have a total of 1969 pieces (got to assume this isn’t a coincidence), and it contains all the separate parts to run your own simulated Moon missionRead More →

TRAPPIST-1 System Ideal For Life Swapping Back in February of 2017, NASA announced the discovery of a seven-planet system orbiting a nearby star. This system, known as TRAPPIST-1, is of particular interest to astronomers because of the nature and orbits of the planets. Not only are all seven planets terrestrial in nature (i.e. rocky), but three of the seven have been confirmed to be within the star’s habitable zone (aka. “Goldilocks Zone”). But beyond the chance that some of these planets could be inhabited, there is also the possibility that their proximity to each other could allow for life to be transferred between them. ThatRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – April 28, 2017: Tim Blais of A Capella Science Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Tim Blais is the founder of A Capella Science, an “educational and utterly nerdy online video project.” You can find his videos online on YouTube at A Capella Science. Guests: Jolene Creighton (fromquarkstoquasars.com / @futurism) Their stories this week:Total Eclipse of the Sun to be commemorated on a Forever Stamp Kepler Stares at Neptune (NASA Video) New Horizons 2.0 Joint mission to Europa could seek life under the ice We use a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to seeRead More →

Pardon My Vomit: Zero G Ettiquette In the Age Of Space Tourism It’s a new era for space travel. And if there’s one thing that sets it apart from the previous one, it is the spirit of collaboration that exists between space agencies and between the public and private sector. And with commercial aerospace (aka. NewSpace) companies looking to provide everything from launch services to orbital and lunar tourism, a day is fast-approaching when ordinary people will be able to go into space. Because of this, many aerospace companies are establishing safety and training programs for prospective clients. If civilians plan on going into space,Read More →

Breakthrough Listen Publishes First Analysis Of 692 Stars In ET Search In July of 2015, Breakthrough Initiatives – a non-profit dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, founded by Yuri Milner – announced the creation of Breakthrough Listen. A ten-year initiative costing $100 million, this program was aimed at using the latest in instrumentation and software to conduct the largest survey to date for extraterrestrial communications, encompassing the 1,000,000 closest stars and 100 closest galaxies. On Thursday, April. 20th, at the Breakthrough Discuss conference, the organization shared their analysis of the first year of Listen data. Gathered by the Green Bank Radio Telescope, this data includedRead More →

A Survivor’s Tale: Cassini Lives Through First Ring Dive One down, twenty-one to go! The Cassini spacecraft survived the first dive through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings, and is now back communicating with Earth. It was a long day for Cassini scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory while the spacecraft was out of contact for 20 hours during this first dive, signaling the beginning of the end for Cassini. “No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn’s other rings, of what we thought this gap betweenRead More →

Europe & China Discuss Moonbase Partnership In recent years, multiple space agencies have shared their plans to return astronauts to the Moon, not to mention establishing an outpost there. Beyond NASA’s plan to revitalize lunar exploration, the European Space Agency (ESA), Rocosmos, and the Chinese and Indian federal space agencies have also announced plans for crewed missions to the Moon that could result in permanent settlements. As with all things in this new age of space exploration, collaboration appears to be the key to making things happen.  This certainly seems to be the case when it comes to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) andRead More →

What Are Fast Radio Bursts? You might think you’re reading an educational website, where I explain fascinating concepts in space and astronomy, but that’s not really what’s going on here. What’s actually happening is that you’re tagging along as I learn more and more about new and cool things happening in the Universe. I dig into them like a badger hiding a cow carcass, and we all get to enjoy the cache of knowledge I uncover. Okay, that analogy got a little weird. Anyway, my point is. Squirrel! Fast radio bursts are the new cosmic whatzits confusing and baffling astronomers, and now we get toRead More →

Is Another Universe Sitting Too Close To Us On The Multiverse Bus? Since the 1960s, astronomers have been aware of the electromagnetic background radiation that pervades the Universe. Known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, this radiation is the oldest light in the Universe and what is left over from the Big Bang. By 2004, astronomers also became aware that a large region within the CMB appeared to be colder than its surroundings. Known as the “CMB Cold Spot”, scientists have puzzled over this anomaly for years, with explanations ranging from a data artifact to it being caused by a supervoid. According to a new studyRead More →

The Next Pluto Mission: An Orbiter and Lander? For decades, we could only imagine what the view of Pluto’s surface might be. Now, we have the real thing. The images and data from the ” target=”_blank”>New Horizons’ mission flyby of Pluto in July 2015 showed us an unexpectedly stunning and geologically active world. Scientists have used words like ‘magical,’ ‘breathtaking’ and ‘scientific wonderland’ to describe the long-awaited close-up views of distant Pluto. Even though scientists are still analyzing the data from New Horizons, ideas are starting to formulate about sending another spacecraft to Pluto, but with a long-term orbiter mission instead of a quick flyby.Read More →

SpaceX to Launch 1st NRO SpySat Sunday after Static Fire Success SpaceX conducts successful static hot fire test of Falcon 9 booster atop Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on 25 Apr. 2017 as seen from Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, FL. The Falcon 9 is slated to launch the NROL-76 super secret spy satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on 30 April 2017. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com MERRITT ISLAND NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, FL – Elon Musk’s SpaceX is primed for another significant space first; the firms first launch of a spy satellite for the US governments super secret spy agency;Read More →

Designing The Hanging Gardens Of Mars NASA is all about solving challenges, and the goal of having a prolonged presence in space, or a colony on Mars or some other world, is full of challenges, including the necessity of growing food. Scientists at Kennedy Advanced Life Support Research are working on the Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project to try and meet that challenge. The Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project (PLMGP) is all about growing vegetables for astronauts during extended stays on the Moon, on Mars, or anywhere they can’t be resupplied from Earth. Beyond growing food, the Project aims to understand how food-growing systems can also beRead More →

Did A Comet Impact Push Humans Into Technological Overdrive? About 14,500 years ago, Earth began transitioning from its cold, glacial self to a warmer interglacial state. However, partway through this period, temperatures suddenly returned to near-glacial conditions. This abrupt change (known as the Younger Dryas period) is believed by some to be the reason why hunter-gatherers started forming sedentary communities, farming, and laying the groundwork for civilization as we know it – aka. the Neolithic Revolution. For over a decade, there have been scientists who have argued that this period the result of a comet hitting Earth. Known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (aka.Read More →

Meet Steve, A Most Peculiar Aurora Nicknamed Steve, this unusual aurora feature is a 15.5-mile-wide (25 km) ribbon of hot gas flowing westward at about 13,300 mph, more than 600 times faster than the surrounding air. The photo was taken last fall. Copyright: Instagram.com/davemarkelphoto This remarkable image was captured last fall by Dave Markel, a photographer based in Kamloops, British Columbia. Later, aurora researcher Eric Donovan of the University of Calgary, discovered Markel’s strange ribbon of light while looking through photos of the northern lights on social media. Knowing he’d found something unusual, Donovan worked sifted through data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm magnetic field missionRead More →

Adieu Titan: So Long & Thanks For All The Hydrocarbons The Cassini spacecraft has done some amazing things since it arrived in the Saturn system in 2004. In addition to providing valuable information on the gas giant and its system of rings, it has also provided us with extensive data and photographs of Saturn’s many moons. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with Saturn’s largest moon, the hydrocarbon-rich satellite known as Titan. And with just a few hours left before Cassini makes its final plunge between Saturn and its innermost ring (something that no other spacecraft has ever done), we should all take thisRead More →

Another Strange Discovery From LHC That Nobody Understands There are some strange results being announced in the physics world lately. A fluid with a negative effective mass, and the discovery of five new particles, are all challenging our understanding of the universe. New results from ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) are adding to the strangeness. ALICE is a detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s one of seven detectors, and ALICE’s role is to “study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where a phase of matter called quark-gluon plasma forms,” according to the CERN website. Quark-gluon plasma is aRead More →

Carnival of Space #506 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #506. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, signRead More →