June 2017

Is Time To Go Back to Uranus and Neptune? Revisiting Ice Giants of the Solar System I look forward to all the future missions that NASA is going to be sending out in the Solar System. Here, check this out. You can use NASA’s website to show you all the future missions. Here’s everything planned for the future, here’s everything going to Mars. Now, let’s look and see what missions are planned for the outer planets of the Solar System, especially Uranus and Neptune. Oh, that’s so sad… there’s nothing. Uranus, seen by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL It’s been decades since humanity had anRead More →

Watch Live 24-Hour Webcast for International Asteroid Day Every day, Earth is hit by 60 to 300 metric tons of space dust and smaller meteors. But sometimes, larger and more dangerous space rocks plummet to Earth, such as on June 30, 1908 when an estimated 40 meter-wide meteoroid exploded over the Tunguska, Siberia region in Russia, devastating 2000 sq. kilometers (770 square miles) of forest. As the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor event attests, the likelihood of a similar event happening again is not an “if” but a “when.” To raise public awareness about asteroid impact hazards and to urge political leaders to work together to beRead More →

Carnival of Space #515 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brad Rogers at The Evolving Planet blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #515. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all 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,Read More →

Amazing New Views of Betelgeuse Courtesy of ALMA This orange blob is the nearby star Betelgeuse, as imaged recently by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA/ESO/NRAO Just. Wow. An angry monster lurks in the shoulder of the Hunter. We’re talking about the red giant star Betelgeuse, also known as Alpha Orionis in the constellation Orion. Recently, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) gave us an amazing view of Betelgeuse, one of the very few stars that is large enough to be resolved as anything more than a point of light. Located 650 light years distant, Betelgeuse is destined to live fast, and die young. TheRead More →

SpaceX Accomplishes Double Headed American Space Spectacular – 2 Launches and 2 Landings in 2 Days from 2 Coasts: Gallery Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 on June 25 at 1:25 p.m. PDT (4:25 p.m. EDT) carrying ten Iridium Next mobile voice and data relay communications satellites to low Earth orbit on the Iridium-2 mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Credit: SpaceX KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – With Sunday’s successful Falcon 9 blastoff for Iridium Communications joining rocketry’s history books, Elon Musk’s SpaceX accomplished a double headed American space spectacular this weekend with 2 launches and 2 booster landings in 2 days from 2Read More →

No, NASA (Still) Has Not Discovered Proof of Alien Life It seems that every few months or so, breathless claims surface on the internet that NASA is about to make an Earth-shattering announcement about aliens … or UFOs … or killer asteroids … or some other sensational assertion. Or better yet, NASA is hiding these ‘facts’ from us. The latest claims says that “NASA Is About to Announce the Discovery of Intelligent Alien Life,” and this one might be receiving more attention and credence than usual because the group making the claim is Anonymous, the notorious hacking and activist group. However, before we get intoRead More →

BulgariaSat-1 Blazes to Orbit on Used SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket as Breakthrough Booster Lands 2nd Time on Oceanic Platform Blastoff of 2nd flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 with 1st geostationary communications for Bulgaria at 3:10 p.m. EDT on June 23, 2017, carrying BulgariaSat-1 to orbit from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – In another breakthrough milestone aimed at slashing the high cost of rocketry, the innovators at billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a ‘used’ rocket for only the second time in history – that blazed a path to orbit with its BulgariaSat-1Read More →

Weekly Space Hangout – June 23, 2017: NEOShield-2 Project Team Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: This week’s special guests are the NEOShield-2 Project Team. NEOShield-2 is a 100% European Union funded project to develop technologies to avoid an asteroid impact on Earth. Guests: Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter) Their stories this week: We use a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to see covered each week, and then Fraser will be selecting the stories from there. Here is the link to the Trello WSH page (http://bit.ly/WSHVote), which you can see without logging in. If you’d like toRead More →

Snake Rovers Might be the Best Way to Explore the Surface and Tunnels on Mars Human space exploration is going to kick into high gear in the coming decades. Within the inner Solar System alone, missions are being planned that will see robotic explorers and crews sent to Near Earth Objects (NEOs), back to the Moon, and even on to Mars. Beyond that, there are even plans to send robotic missions to Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and other “ocean worlds” to look for signs of life. In all cases, questions natural arise as to what kinds of missions will be most suited to them. In theRead More →

2nd SpaceX Recycled Falcon 9 Rocket Launching 1st Bulgarian GeoComSat June 23, Plus Potential Weekend Launch ‘Doubleheader’ – Watch Live Flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage arrives at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida slated for launch of BulgariaSat-1 on June 23, 2017. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – For only the second time in history, SpaceX will launch a ‘flight-proven’ Falcon 9 rocket this Friday afternoon and the payload this time for this remarkable and science fictionesque milestone is the first geostationary communications satellite for the nation of Bulgaria. Blastoff of the BulgariaSat-1 communications satellite for commercial broadbandRead More →