Carnival of Space #405

Welcome, come in to the 405th Carnival of Space!  The carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. I’m Susie Murph, part of the team at Universe Today and now, on to this week’s stories!

First off, we’ll head over to the NextBigFuture website for the first four stories. In exciting news, Y.K. Bae Corporation announced that their proprietary Photonic Laser Thruster (PLT), first time in history, has successfully accelerated a 450 gram (~1 lb.) spacecraft simulator with pure laser light. They simulated zero-gravity by amplified thrust, successfully propelled a gliding platform along a 2 meter frictionless air track.

Next, SpaceX’s Dragon module achieved a major success when simulating a major failure in its engines and performed an emergency bail-out procedure over NASA’s Cape Canaveral facility. The test proved the concept of their method for bailing out the crew in a major failure situation.

SpaceX had another big achievement this week. Under an updated agreement that streamlines the certification process, the Air Force expects to certify SpaceX no later than June to compete for space launches.

Also this week, NASA revealed that NASA NIAC researcher Philip Lubin is developing a system using directed energy propulsion combined with small probes that will supplement the current long range remote sensing done by orbital telescopes, improving interstellar exploration.

From the Chandra X-Ray Observatory site, a magnetar has been discovered exhibiting some unusual behavior near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

From the Vega0.0 site, the Chinese Yutu mission continues working in the Moon surface more than a year after its landing. Read more here (article is printed in Spanish).

Also at Vega0.0, a new study offers a possible solution about the high coronal temperature of the Sun. The key could be the nanoflares. Read more here. (article is printed in Spanish)

Next, from the Meridian Journal, astronomers find on a super-Earth exoplanet the first evidence of possible volcanic activity.

Also, according to new study, Saturn’s moon Enceladus’ water geysers may be ‘curtain eruptions’ of vapor instead of individual jets. This was concluded after studying data from the Cassini mission.

Finally, we return to my home site, Universe Today, to discover what we can expect to see with comets Q1 PanSTARRS & G2 MASTER this summer. Get out your telescopes and binoculars!

That’s it for this week’s Carnival! See you all next time!

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.