Archive for the 'Space' Category
Gravitational Waves Detected
February 11th, 2016Via: Guardian: Physicists have announced the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago. “We have detected gravitational waves. We did it,” said David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo), at a press conference in Washington. The announcement is the climax of a century […]
SpaceX Has Successfully Launched and Landed a Falcon 9 Rocket
December 22nd, 2015Via: Reuters: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Monday with a payload of communications satellites before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral and landed safely near its launch pad in a dramatic spaceflight first. The successful mission, capped by delivery of all 11 satellites to orbit […]
American Satellite Started Transmitting 46 Years After Being Abandoned in 1967
December 8th, 2015Via: The Vintage News: An American satellite, abandoned in 1967 as a piece of Space Junk has begun transmitting again after 46 years. An Amateur Radio Astronomer in North Cornwall accidentally picked up the signal in 2013 and after cross checking with various lists, has identified it as LES1 built by the Massachusetts Institute of […]
Blue Origin: Successful Reusable Rocket Test
November 24th, 2015Via: NPR: It started with a boom and ended with a touchdown: Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has sent a craft past the edge of space and then landed its rocket safely – and vertically — in Texas. The flight of the New Shepard spacecraft was the second full […]
Stephen Hawking and Russian Billionaire Start $100 Million Search for Aliens
July 20th, 2015Hmm. This is Hawking back in 2010: In a new Discovery Channel documentary, which premiered Sunday night, British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said that communicating with aliens could be a threat to Earth. Hawking said it is likely that alien life exists, but a visit from extraterrestrials might be similar to Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the […]
NASA’s Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter
July 14th, 2015Via: NASA: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto. After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface — roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India – making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so […]
Boeing Patents Laser-Powered Fusion-Fission Jet Engine for Airplanes, Spacecraft
July 13th, 2015Via: Ars Technica: Assume the brace position. Boeing has received a patent for, I kid you not, a laser-powered fusion-fission jet propulsion system. Boeing envisions that this system could replace both rocket and turbofan engines, powering everything from spacecraft to missiles to airplanes. The patent, US 9,068,562, combines inertial confinement fusion, fission, and a turbine […]
DARPA: Engineering Organisms That Will Terraform Mars [???]
June 28th, 2015Via: Vice: The goal of terraforming Mars would be to warm up and potentially thicken its atmosphere by growing green, photosynthesizing plants, bacteria, and algae on the barren Martian surface. It’s a goal that even perpetual techno-optimists like Elon Musk think isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but it’s a goal that DARPA apparently already […]
SpaceX Files with Government to Provide Internet Service from Space
June 9th, 2015This has been only a couple of years away for the past two decades. Via: Washington Post: Elon Musk’s space company has asked the federal government for permission to begin testing on an ambitious project to beam Internet service from space, a significant step forward for an initiative that could create another major competitor to […]
Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane to Fly Again Next Month
April 25th, 2015There’s still no solid information about what it’s doing. Via: Space: The United States Air Force’s X-37B space plane will launch on its fourth mystery mission next month. The unmanned X-37B space plane, which looks like a miniature version of NASA’s now-retired space shuttle orbiter, is scheduled to blast off atop a United Launch Alliance […]
