Archive for the 'Space' Category
Former NASA Scientist Believes Viking Mission Found Life on Mars in 1976
October 11th, 2019Not new claims, but very interesting if you haven’t heard about this before. Via: Scientific American: I was fortunate to have participated in that historic adventure as experimenter of the Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment on NASA’s spectacular Viking mission to Mars in 1976. On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results […]
China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon
September 30th, 2019Via: IEEE: The team behind a pioneering biological experiment sent to the lunar far side has released an image showing two green leaves grown on the moon. The experiment began shortly after China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon, on 3 January this year. Cotton, arabidopsis and […]
The Silicon Valley Heavyweights Who Want to Settle the Moon
September 5th, 2019The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein Via: Bloomberg: The moon is all the rage these days. China wants to send people there. So too does the United States and NASA. In fact, just about every country with a space program has some sort of lunar ambition that they hope will play […]
China’s Lunar Rover Has Found Something Weird on the Far Side of the Moon
August 31st, 2019Via: Space.com: China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, ‘gel-like’ substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon. The mission’s rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its […]
Experimental U.S. Air Force Space Plane Breaks Previous Record for Orbital Spaceflight
August 26th, 2019Via: Space.com: The U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane just broke its spaceflight-duration record. At 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT) today (Aug. 26), the robotic X-37B sailed past the program mark of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes, which was set by the previous mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4). The current […]
LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light
August 2nd, 2019Via: Planetary Society: Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They’ve all led up to now. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. Since unfurling the spacecraft’s silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during […]
Skywatcher Captures Rare Image of Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane
July 6th, 2019Via: LiveScience: Skywatcher and satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands recently caught a rare glimpse of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane. Vandebergh said he’d been hunting for the robotic spacecraft for months and finally managed to track it down in May. But it took a bit longer to get photos of […]
What Is This?
July 4th, 2019The first part. Any prosaic explanations for this? Do any of the many physicists, engineers, video experts reading want to take a stab at calculating the acceleration of this thing? The second part is probably some de-orbiting satellite or space junk. Via: Thirdphaseofmoon:
GPS Outage Would Cost U.S. Economy $1 Billion Per Day
June 17th, 2019Via: Ars Technica: Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology has become widely adopted in the United States and abroad. The concept of satellite-based navigation has become so essential that other world powers, including China, Russia, the European Union, India, and Japan, have all started building their own regional or global systems. […]
United Technologies, Raytheon to Combine Into Defense Giant
June 10th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: United Technologies Corp. agreed to buy Raytheon Co. in an all-stock deal, forming an aerospace and defense giant with $74 billion in sales in one of the industry’s biggest transactions ever. The new entity will be called Raytheon Technologies Corp. when the deal closes in the first half of 2020, after United Technologies […]
