The European Space Agency has hailed the successful test of an air-breathing engine that works in space. The engines don’t need the oxygen found in air to burn. Instead, as the ESA has explained here, the idea is to collect air, compress it, give it a charge and then squirt it out to provide thrust. Read more about ESA builds air-breathing engine that works in space[…]
During a press conference after liftoff, Musk said it was dicey whether the second stage would power up at all. The fuel could have frozen, the oxygen boiled off, or the avionics failed, as the rocket spent more than five hours in our planet’s high-radiation Van Allen belts before firing up. Usually spacecraft punch through Read more about SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids, central core booster explodes[…]
KAGOSHIMA – Japan successfully launched on Saturday the world’s smallest satellite-carrying rocket following a failed attempt in January last year, the nation’s space agency said. The rocket about the size of a utility pole, measuring 10 meters in length and 50 centimeters in diameter, lifted off from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture and Read more about Japan successfully launches world’s smallest satellite-carrying rocket[…]
The Kepler Space Telescope has found oodles of exoplants, but now astroboffins have spotted the first exoplanets outside our galaxy. A group of astroboffins from the University of Oklahoma has become the first to demonstrate exoplanet observations in another galaxy – one that’s 3.8 billion light years away, or one-third of the distance across the Read more about Exoplanets from another galaxy spotted[…]
Over the past week the station has been dedicated to an S-band scan looking for new targets and refreshing the frequency list, triggered by the recent launch of the mysterious ZUMA mission. This tends to be a semi-annual activity as it can eat up a lot of observing resources even with much of the data Read more about NASA’s Long Dead (since 2007) ‘IMAGE’ Satellite is Alive! – how satellite hunters go to work.[…]
They found that planets in the same planetary system have correlated sizes. “Each planet is more likely to be the size of its neighbor than a size drawn at random from the distribution of observed planet sizes,” the paper said. If the system contains three or more planets, the planets are also more likely to Read more about Our Solar System is an exception: most planets have more regular spacing and sizing[…]
Bacteria found on the outside of the International Space station could be alien life, according to a cosmonaut who has visited the satellite. Spacewalkers regularly take samples and materials from the outside of the station when they head outside for what are officially called “extravehicular activity”. Those samples are then taken down to scientists on Read more about Bacteria found on International Space Station may be alien in origin, says cosmonaut[…]
Planetary Habitability Laboratory
At Planet, we’ve been pursuing Mission 1: to image the entire Earth’s landmass every day. I couldn’t be more excited to announce that we have achieved our founding mission.Six years ago, our team started in a garage in Cupertino. Mission 1 was the north star: we needed to build the satellites and systems, secure the Read more about Planet now images the entire Earth’s landmass every day[…]
Our Asgardia-1 satellite was launched successfully today from the Wallops launch site in Virginia, USA.Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, Asgardia’s Head of Nation, accompanied by members of his administration personally witnessed the launch.We are delighted to announce therefore that the Asgardia space kingdom has now established its sovereign territory in space.Congratulations to all Asgardians! Source: Asgardia – Read more about Asgardia – The Space Nation launches first independent territory into space[…]
Organohalogens, a class of molecules that contain at least one halogen atom bonded to carbon, are abundant on the Earth where they are mainly produced through industrial and biological processes1. Consequently, they have been proposed as biomarkers in the search for life on exoplanets2. Simple halogen hydrides have been detected in interstellar sources and in Read more about Many Protostellar and cometary detections of organohalogens: probably not alien in origin.[…]
FalconSAT-3 was built in 2005 and 2006 by cadets and faculty in the Space Systems Research Center at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. In amateur service the downlink is at 435.103 MHz transmitting 1W into a ¼ whip that extends from a corner of the satellite near the Lightband separation ring. Read more about Amateur Radio Hams get Satellite from the US to run BBS on[…]
The entire NASA image and video library is now searchable online! NASA Image and Video Library Source: NASA Image and Video Library
After decades of tinkering, Peter Beck and Rocket Lab are poised to bring low-cost launches to the world. Source: At 18, He Strapped a Rocket Engine to His Bike. Now He’s Taking on SpaceX As opposed to running a company on insane working hours and crazy project changes, this guy is launching rockets at $5m Read more about At 18, He Strapped a Rocket Engine to His Bike. Now He’s Taking on SpaceX: Rocket Lab, led by someone who knows what he’s doing![…]
A black hole with three billion times the mass of the Sun has been found hurtling out of its parent galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour! What could give it that kind of incredible boost? Turns out, it’s something even more incredible: the two supermassive black holes that merged to form it in the first place. Read more about A 3 billion solar mass black hole rockets out of a galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour.[…]
Pluto fans are attempting to reignite a contentious astronomy debate: What is a planet? […] Is Pluto a planet? It’s not a question scientists ask in polite company. “It’s like religion and politics,” said Kirby Runyon, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “People get worked up over it. I’ve gotten worked up over it.” Read more about A new definition would add 102 planets to our solar system — including Pluto[…]
Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. They were detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Three of them lie in the habitable zone and could harbour water, increasing the possibility that the system could play host to life. It has both Read more about Temperate earth-sized worlds found in extraordinarily rich planetary system[…]
The presence of a large underdensity, the dipole repeller, is predicted based on a study of the velocity field of our Local Group of galaxies. The combined effects of this super-void and the Shapley concentration control the local cosmic flow. […] Our Local Group of galaxies is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background Read more about Our galaxy is being pushed towards Shapley attractor from Dipole repeller by gravity flows[…]
The onboard atomic clocks that drive the satellite-navigation signals on Europe’s Galileo network have been failing at an alarming rate. Across the 18 satellites now in orbit, nine clocks have stopped operating. Three are traditional rubidium devices; six are the more precise hydrogen maser instruments that were designed to give Galileo superior performance to the Read more about Galileo satellites experiencing multiple clock failures[…]
Our Pegasus rocket successfully launched NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) from our L-1011 Stargazer aircraft this morning at 8:37 a.m. EST, and completed payload deployment at 8:52 a.m. To learn more about the CYGNSS mission, visit NASA’s blog here. About the Mission The three-stage Pegasus XL will be used to deploy eight small Read more about Orbital ATK air launches Pegasus XL CYGNSS[…]
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying star. The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the moon. This stellar “cannon fire” has continued once Read more about Hubble detects giant ‘cannonballs’ shooting from star[…]
In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station. China’s Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the Read more about China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth[…]
Rosetta’s dust-analysing COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) instrument has made the first unambiguous detection of solid organic matter in the dust particles ejected by Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in the form of complex carbon-bearing molecules. While organics had already been detected in situ on the comet’s surface by instruments on-board Philae and from orbit by Rosetta’s Read more about Rosetta catches dusty organics[…]
Adam Frank from the University of Rochester and Woodruff Sullivan from the University of Washington based their new equation on the Drake equation, used for calculating the probability of extraterrestrial civilisation, written by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961. Source: Are we alone in the universe? Not likely, according to math