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Carnival of Space #507 Welcome, come in to the 507th Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. I’m Susie Murph, part of the team at Universe Today and CosmoQuest. So now, on to this week’s stories! Over at Planetaria, Paul Scott Anderson reports on New findings from two ‘ocean moons’ increase possibility of finding alien life. Cassini and the Hubble Space Telescope have dramatically increased our odds in this endeavor. Paul also reports on how four of the Trappist worlds may genuinely be covered in water,Read More →

NASA’s Space Chainmail to Give Astronauts the Edge in Space Duels One would think NASA was preparing for a some sword fights in space! At least, that’s the impression one might get when they see the new armor NASA is developing for the first time. Officially, they are referring to it as a new type of “space fabric“, one which will provide protection to astronauts, spaceships and deployable devices. But to the casual observer, it looks a lot like chain mail armor! The new armor is the brainchild of Polit Casillas, a systems engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Inspired by traditional textiles, this armorRead More →

SpaceX Stages Stupendous NRO Spysat Sunrise Liftoff and Land Landing SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying classified NROL-76 surveillance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office successfully launches shortly after sunrise from Launch Complex 39A on 1 May 2017 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 1st stage accomplished successful ground landing at the Cape nine minutes later. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – SpaceX today staged the stupendously successful Falcon 9 rocket launch at sunrise of a mysterious spy satellite in support of U.S. national defense for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) while simultaneously accomplishing a breathtaking pinpoint land landing of the boosters firstRead More →

What’s that Strange Glowing Mold? Astronauts will Soon be Able to Sequence Unknown Space Organisms Seeking to understand more about space-born microbes, NASA has initiated a program known as Genes in Space-3 – a collaborative effort that will prepare, sequence and identify unknown organisms, entirely from space. For those who might be thinking that this sounds a lot like the film Life – where astronauts revive an alien organism on the International Space Station and everyone dies! – rest assured, this is not the setup for some horror movie. In truth, it represents a game-changing development that builds on recent accomplishments, where DNA was firstRead More →

An Aging Pulsar has Captured a new Companion, and it’s Spinning back up Again When massive stars reach the end of their life cycle, they explode in a massive supernova and cast off most of their material. What’s left is a “milliscond pulsar”, a super dense, highly-magnetized neutron star that spins rapidly and emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. Eventually, these stars lose their rotational energy and begin to slow down, but they can speed up again with the help of a companion. According to a recent study, an international team of scientists witnessed this rare event when observing an ultra-slow pulsar located in the neighboringRead More →

Star-travel 5 Million Years Into The Milky Way’s Future Two Million Stars on the Move Gaze into Gaia’s crystal ball and you will see the future. This video shows the motion of 2,057,050 stars in the coming 5 million years from the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution sample, part of the first data release of European Space Agency’s Gaia mission back in September 2016. Gaia is a space observatory parked at the L2 Lagrange Point, a stable place in space a million miles behind Earth as viewed from the Sun. Its mission is astrometry: measuring the precise positions, distances and motion of 1 billion astronomical objects (primarily stars) to create aRead More →

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 →