Archive for the 'Space' Category
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 […]
U.S. Aerospace Command Moving Comms Gear Back to Cold War Bunker
April 8th, 2015Via: AFP: The US military command that scans North America’s skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said. The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command’s sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) […]
Google and Fidelity Invest $1 Billion in SpaceX
January 20th, 2015Via: cnet: Google is cementing its interest in outer space. The company, along with investment firm Fidelity, is pumping $1 billion into SpaceX, the rocket company co-founded by billionaire Elon Musk. The deal, confirmed on Tuesday by SpaceX, is just the latest bet Google has made on space technologies. The company has recently made investments […]
Mystery Surrounds NASA’s Secret Mission in Africa
December 3rd, 2014Via: ABC: A NASA official recently confirmed that one of the agency’s aircraft had been spotted on an American military airstrip in eastern Africa a few weeks ago, but like a series of U.S. military officials, declined to say what the space agency’s high-tech bird was doing there. “I really can’t give you any of […]
ESA Lands Science Probe on Comet
November 12th, 2014#CometLanding Via: European Space Agency, Rosetta Mission / Twitter: TOUCHDOWN for @Philae2014! #CometLanding pic.twitter.com/ZMBeB8ng3h — ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014 More: Philae Touches Down On The Surface Of A Comet
