gear Push settings
Following the recent failed launch of an unmanned vehicle in a three stage Soyuz rocket this past Wednesday, the International Space Station might become temporarily devoid of its crew by November, if NASA, who is in charge of the outpost, doesn’t deem the Russian spacecraft fit anymore to transport astronauts. A Soyuz rocket crashed Wednesday […]
More than just a SciFi dream, Paypal founder and billionaire Elon Musk wants to make “man on Mars” a reality. Speaking at a recent spaceflight propulsion conference held by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on Tuesday, Musk unveiled during his keynote how his company, SpaceX, plans on sending humanity to Mars in coming decades. […]
The Universe is in constant expansion, which is why it is commonly said to be infinite, so basically one can measure all he wants and still won’t find out how big the Universe is. An accurate measurement of this rate of expansion, however, is critical for space observations, and a young Australian student has recently […]
A watery death awaits the International Space Station after its programmed retirement in 2020, according to a recent statement released by Roscosmos (Russian Space Agency). Space doesn’t need more junk, apparently in their account. Launched in 1998 as joint effort involving numerous space agencies from around the world and tens of billions of dollars worth […]
Astronomers have discovered the largest body of water so far known, a reservoir of water floating in space around a ancient distant quasar, holding 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth’s oceans. Remarkably enough, the find was dated as being 12 billion light years away, only 1.6 billion light years farther from […]
There were a lot of firsts during the initial lunar landings, especially during the very first Apollo 11 mission. There was, of course, the obvious first famous moon walk by Neil Armstrong, the first country to land on the moon, the first word spoken from the moon, and so on. A new genesis of gestures […]
Astronomers have discovered a fourth moon orbiting Pluto via the famous Hubble telescope, NASA announced this Wednesday. Some of you might be wondering, just exactly how was it possible for astronomers to have missed it so far, considering NASA’s been tracking space rocks even from the edge of the solar system. The truth is, our […]
Incredibly enough, using a a simple, standard issued astrophotography set-up, amateur astronomer Scott Ferguson was able to film in incredible detail the ISS docked together with Atlantis as they both orbited above him – all in clear sky, broad daylight. How did he do this? Well, as equipment goes Scott, like I said, used a simple […]
This weekend, NASA‘s DAWN spacecraft finally put a lot of tension and nerves to rest after it successfully entered Vesta’s orbit, the second largest object in the Asteroid Belt. The whole event took place at 1 a.m. EDT Saturday (0500 GMT), marking the first time a man made spacecraft entered the orbit of an object […]
After a four year journey, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will finally reach the orbit of Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our solar system. The object, located 117 million miles from Earth and spanning across a circumference of 329 miles, will be visited in premiere by Dawn this weekend when the latter will hover over on […]
Despite unfriendly whether filled with low lying clouds and a last moment countdown glitch, which gave of all the 750,000 spectators gathered at Kennedy Space Center venue to witness the launch a pretty big scare, Atlantis was catapulted into low-orbit with dazzling success yesterday, July 8th. STS 135 was, as the name implies, the 135th […]
Space shuttle Atlantis will embark this Friday on its final journey, symbolizing the end of NASA’s illustrious space shuttle program. Yesterday, the last crew of the orbiter Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, where the launch will take place. Commander Chris Ferguson said: “I think I speak for the whole crew in that we […]
NASA just confirmed the shuttle’s last-ever mission will launch on July 8th. The space shuttle Atlantis will blast off headed for the International Space Station this Friday for a very important mission, in which it will deliver the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to the orbiting outpost, bearing supplies, food for a whole year and spares. The 12-day […]
This Monday (June 27), an asteroid the size of a bus just buzzed our planet after a flyby which brought it closer to Earth than most satellites. Dubbed asteroid 2011 MD, it was first spotted by MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program just last week on June 22, but there never was any […]
Launched in in the late 1970’s in a mission to study the planets Jupiter, Saturn and their respective satellites, the two Voyager probes have been most certainly put to a more pioneering goal and sent into outer space after having completed their last missions. Currently, Voyager-1 is the most distant human-made object from Earth and […]
Last year, in October, China launched its second moon orbiter, as part of the country’s rapidly growing reformed space program . The Chang’e 2, as it was dubbed, has seen a great deal of improvements compared to its predecessor, including a more powerful rocket that delivered the probe to the moon more quickly. Today, after […]
NASA announced that it will launch an unmaned ship to a nearby asteroid, in an attempt to figure out more about both the asteroid itself, and how life started on our planet. The mission, named Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – or, as always, with an easier more manageable name, Osiris-Rex was chosen to take place […]
A recent NASA operation (who knew they do this stuff ?) busted a woman who was trying to sell what she claimed was a piece of the Moon for the meager price of 1.7 million dollars. This came as a result of months of targeting her, after rumour spread that she was selling such […]
Like i reckoned in some of my past articles, space tourism is getting more and more popular each year, as more aeronautical companies begin to see the high potential of catering for millionaires’ orbital ambitions. One of the most sought after and ambitious space taxi projects is the highly publicized civilian lunar trip, in the […]
Space shuttle Endeavour was set to launch a few days ago, and everything seemd to go according to plan; however, technical difficulties are forcing the NASA engineers to delay the launch at least until the end of the week (probably more), which is bad news for everybody who had planned a visit to the launch […]
In what can be considered a highly ambitious project, but quite highly unlikely to get passed bill, Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., has introduced H.R. 1641, the “Reasserting American Leadership in Space Act” or the “REAL Space Act” or simply the “Back to the Moon Bill,” as its named in the vernacular. The key brief of […]
As the last two shuttle flights will mark the end of a thirty year long program, NASA is looking for alternatives to transport astronauts, cargo and equipment to and from outer space. The best alternative seems to come from the private sectore, and with this in mind NASA has awarded a total $269 million dived […]
Everybody was eager to see where the four space ships who will soon be retired will go; the idea was to chose a museum which somehow has connections with the space program, and where a lot of people can see it. Well, what city has more connections with the space program than Houston ? It […]
Tuesday will mark the 50th year since human space flight, since the day Yuri Gagarin left Russia and became the first man to go in outer space, as well as the 30th anniversary of the launch of the shuttle Discovery, the legendary but already retired space shuttle. This is the day when NASA will announce […]
NASA engineers and technicians are making the last adjustments to the Mars Rover, which is about the size of a small SUV; the rover is set to be sent to Florida for launch later this year, so everybody’s in a hurry and trying to make everything as fast as they can, without making any mistake […]
NASA is going through one of it’s hardest periods ever, but that doesn’t mean that the space research and industry is too; take a look at SpaceX, a private company that already successfully launched a rocket, Falcon, into outer space last year. Now, they’re planning something even bigger. Falcon Heavy has about twice as […]
The planet closest to the sun is very hot, yet very cold at the same time. It may even be a bit icy. The Mercury Messenger spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit on March 17, and since then, NASA has showed some of the pictures taken by it, which are absolutely amazing. The visit to Mercury […]
Yesterday, Japan’s unmanned space freighter Kounotori 2, of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle class, intentionally entered Earth’s atmosphere where it crashed and burned after its two months mission supplying the International Spate Station – with it a slew of junk off the space station was dumped. Attached to the H-2 Transfer Vehicle was also a sensor […]
Romantics and astronomy aficionados alike (much of the same aren’t they?) will rejoice as this Saturday a rare spectacle of the moon will occur when it will come around closest its been to the Earth in 18 years! Much like planetary movement, Earth natural satellite movement is an ellipse, meaning it has points where its […]
As reported earlier on Thursday morning, the Messenger NASA spacecraft was scheduled for an evening jump into Mercury’s orbit through a tricky maneuver which involved a “burn” – essentially “riding its brakes” by firing its main thruster – to slow the spacecraft enough to be captured by Mercury’s gravity. At 8:45 p.m. ET, the procedure […]
Amidst all the stuff that’s going on for NASA right now, they can still find the resources to strike a $753 million deal with Russia for 12 round trips to the International Space Station, paying about $63 million a seat. “It’s an 8.5 percent annual increase,” NASA spokesman Josh Bluck told Space.com, referring to the […]
The joint exploration by NASA and ESA, encompassing joint efforts from the American and European space agency seemed like a dream come true for astronomers from both sides. Especially after the European side designed and started building the Mars Rover, everything appeared to go in the right direction. But the issues NASA is facing at […]
When launched in 1984, Discovery was top notch; it was the best available around, and only the third operational orbiter; now, after 3 flights, over five thousand orbits and no less than 365 days spent in space, during which it traveled 150 million miles Discovery left the International Space Station (ISS) for the last time; […]
Two days ago, the whole world was teeming with excitement, after some NASA researchers reported finding traces of alien life in meteorites; now, even their employer distances itself from them, and the whole scientific world seems to frown upon this work. However, in what is a very unusual move, NASA has denied any involvement with […]
NASA is going through a whole lot during period: discussions about budget cuts, problems with launches, even with Hubble, and many, many more smaller or bigger problems are denting one of the finest organizations in the world. But a pair of costly satellite crashes mean dealt an even more severe blow to the space agency, […]
Whenever Boeing and NASA team up, you can bet your sweet lasers something wicked is going to happen; actually, the first logical thing that would come to mind is a space plane – and this is what they did. The US X-37B is now in orbit, after a successful launch that took place without any […]
After six years of loneliness, this Valentine’s day was the charm for one of the veteran comet-chasing spacecrafts. As Stardust briefly met with the comet nicknamed Tempel 1, the spacecraft took dozens of pictures of the comet’s icy surface; but this was no random encounter – the purpose of it was to see how a […]
In 2004, NASA researchers identified the Apophis asteroid and after some quick calculations they states there is a chance the asteroid will hit our homey planet in 2029. A few observations and some other calculations later, they explained that that chance is extremely small for 2029, as well as other years to come. However, reports […]
I’m gonna be honest with you – I didn’t see ‘2012’; honestly, I tried to. I started watching it two times, but it was just too stupid – and not the kind of funny stupid, the kind that just takes all the pleasure of watching (if you have a slight idea about what they’re saying […]
JAXA, the Japanese space agency is becoming more and more active these days, as Japanese researchers are getting involved in more and more ambitious projects. Recently, a probe they sent out returned home with grains of dust gathered from an asteroid, a feat without precedent in history. The finding could provide valuable insight into the […]
Tuesday at 6:51 a.m. EDT (1051 GMT) a small asteroid dubbed TD54 passed the Earth dangerously close, above a section of Southeast Asia by Singapore, being at its closest 28,000 miles from our blue planet. The asteroid, 2010 TD54 was first discovered on October 9th, by scientists in Arizona at a NASA-sponsored lab. A few […]
When early galaxies formed, there was a surprisingly high rate of new stars being formed, which was explained by major galactic collisions; however, recent evidence suggests that in fact the answer is much simpler, and not nearly as violent. Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have observed three ancient galaxies […]
Last week at the latest TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, astronomer Dimitar Sassilov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a distinguished member of the Kepler space telescope science team, unveiled some incredible results gathered by our eyes and ears in the galaxy. Kepler’s most recent reported downloaded conferred some incredible statistics, among which most importantly the discovery of: […]
The above photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope around mid last year, proving excellent practice for Hubble’s newly installed Wide Field Camera 3. Captioned is the by now famous NGC 3603 nebula, located in the Carina spiral arm – it’s by far one of the most spectacular star forming regions in the Milky […]
While America seems to have delayed it’s Moon base ambitions, Japan seems to have no such plans; according to their own statements, they have absolutely no intention of letting perfectly good lunar lands go to waste. An ambitious plan of (just?) $2.2 billion investments is in the works at JAXA (Japan’s space agency), with the […]
Barack Obama came out and said that it should be possible for NASA to send astronauts to Mars and bring them back safely by the mid 2030s. The US president said this while explaining the details of his plans with the US space agency at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mister Obama has set […]
Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our […]
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is already in its 7th year on Mars, and over the years it provided some quite useful information; researchers from NASA have been constantly working on ways to improve and optimize it by constantly uploading new software. Such is the case with the software they applied this winter, which makes […]
At nearly 200 meters below the ice, there is no light, the temperature is way below 0 degrees, and scientists were expecting to find nothing more than a handful of microbes – and for good reason. So it’s easy to understand why they were so surprised to find not a single (evolved) life form, but […]
It’s NASA’s second launch in just 4 days (after Endeavour), and this time it’s about the most advanced solar observatory ever built. It was first placed on a shuttle station complex and it was orbiting the Atlantic when it was rocketed into space in an unmaned rocket. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (as it was named) […]
