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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 – […]
Hubble Finds a Dead Galaxy that was Finished Making Stars Just a Billion Years After the Big Bang Thanks to recent improvements in space-based and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have been able to probe deeper into the Universe than ever before. By looking billions of years back in time, we are able to test our theories […]
Saturn Rides Bareback On The Galactic Dark Horse The bright dot is Saturn and it shines on the back of the Galactic Dark Horse, a collection of dark nebulae in the constellation Ophiuchus that resembles a prancing horse. The head is to the right with a wisp of a tail to the left. The photo, […]
See NASA’s Curiosity Rover Simultaneously from Orbit and Red Planet’s Surface Climbing Mount Sharp NASA’s Curiosity rover as seen simultaneously on Mars surface and from orbit on Sol 1717, June 5, 2017. The robot snapped this self portrait mosaic view while approaching Vera Rubin Ridge at the base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater – […]
Is Human Hibernation Possible? Going to Sleep for Long Duration Spaceflight We’ve spent a few articles on Universe Today talking about just how difficult it’s going to be to travel to other stars. Sending tiny unmanned probes across the vast gulfs between stars is still mostly science fiction. But to send humans on that journey? […]
Let’s Clean up the Space Junk with Magnetic Space Tugs After 50 years of sending rockets, satellites, and payloads into orbit, humanity has created something of a “space junk” problem. Recent estimates indicate that there are more than 170 million pieces of debris up there, ranging in size from less than 1 cm (o.4 in) […]
LISA is On! Gravitational Wave Detection is Going to Space The discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment in 2015 sent ripples through the scientific community. Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the confirmation of these waves (and two subsequent detections) solved a long-standing cosmological mystery. In addition to bending the fabric […]
