So DARPA wants a reusable spaceplane. I mean, who doesn’t? For decades, space experts have tried to design quick-turnover, reusable launch systems. So far, however, no one has made one that works. “There really isn’t any kind of vehicle today that does exactly what they’re asking people to do,” Micah Walter-Range, director of research and […]
Cambridge, Mass – NASA predicts that 100 million worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy may host alien life, and space program scientists estimate that humans will be able to find life within two decades. Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters on Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION , Steve Swanson, Expedition 39 Crew, NASA] In mid-April, the International Space Station captured the unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule sent to resupply the orbiting outpost. Pictured above, the station’s Canadarm2 had just grabbed the commercial spaceship. The Dragon capsule was filled with over 5000 lbs (2260 kilos) of supplies […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Data – Voyager 2, NASA Planetary Data System] Cruising through the outer solar system, the Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune on August 25, 1989, the only spacecraft to visit the most distant gas giant. Based on the images recorded during its close encounter and in […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Dan Long (Apache Point Observatory) /Tom Murphy (UC San Diego) Explanation: This is not a scene from a sci-fi special effects movie. The green beam of light and red lunar disk are real enough, captured in the early morning hours of April 15. Of course, the reddened lunar disk […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA] Why is Saturn partly blue? The above picture of Saturn approximates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The above picture was taken in 2006 March by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Here Saturn’s […]
A cosmic mystery is uniting monks and scientists in Japan after a tree grown from a cherry stone that orbited the Earth for eight months bloomed years earlier than expected — and with very surprising flowers. The four-year-old sapling — grown from a cherry pit that spent time onboard the International Space Station (ISS) — […]
“Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, if the first segment is any indication, will attempt to package unconditional blind faith in evolution as scientific literacy in an effort to create interest in science,” wrote a blogger for Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics ministry that promotes the view that the universe, our planet, and its inhabitants came […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA] What would it be like to see a sunset on Mars? To help find out, the robotic rover Spirit was deployed in 2005 to park and watch the Sun dip serenely below the distant lip of Gusev crater. … Fine […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS; Digital processing: Damia Bouic] Landing in mid-2012, the Curiosity rover is searching for clues of whether life could ever have existed on the red planet [and has found] evidence for an ancient (but now dried) freshwater lake…. To continue its investigation, the car-sized rover is […]
