Space and astronomy news
In case you missed it, I hosted the 4th Carnival of Space yesterday here at Universe Today, so no astrosphere. But today is a new day, and there’s an astrosphere: First, Skymania News takes us on a tour of the new planetarium which is part of the restoration of the Royal Observatory in London. Really …
Wherever humans go, our microbes go too. Astronauts on board Mir experienced this first hand. Even thought the spaceship was cleaned as thoroughly as possible before launch, years of human habitation made it a breeding ground for molds and microbes. Over time, these wee beasties can build up, and cause a genuine health concern for …
Here’s a scenario that will face many of us in the far future. You’re hurtling through the cosmos at nearly the speed of light in your spaceship when you take a wrong turn and pass into the event horizon of a black hole. Uh oh, you’re dead – not yet, but it’s inevitable. Since nothing, …
Continue reading “Maximizing Survival Time Inside the Event Horizon of a Black Hole”
Flightglobal.com is reporting that NASA and Virgin Galactic have signed a memorandum of understanding to work on commercial spaceflight and hypersonic airline travel.
ESA’s new Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, has recently spent 21 days in a chamber that simulated the cold, radiation and vacuum of space. And it passed with flying colours. The 20-tonne spacecraft will eventually be attached to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket in the summer of 2007, and flown to the International …
Continue reading “Jules Verne Spends 21 Days in Space, Here on Earth”
Modern physics! Who knows where it’s going? Objects so small that we can never see them. Strings that vibrate with the resonance of life. A universe so big and growing, yet starting from no more than a dot. Surely all this is too much! Not so. Marcus Chown in his book, ‘The Quantum Zoo – …
Continue reading “The Quantum Zoo – A Tourist’s Guide to the Neverending Universe”
It might sound hard to believe, but dozens of spacecraft have crashed themselves onto the surface of the Moon. All in the name of science. The first was the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2, which smashed into the lunar surface in 1959. Well, an upcoming mission is all set to do it again. NASA’s Lunar CRater …
This photograph of galaxy NGC 908 was taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. This spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1786 by William Herschel, and is considered a starburst galaxy. Clusters of young, massive stars pepper its spiral arms indicating regions of furious star formation. NGC 908 must have had a recent …
Flight test of a prototype droid by MIT undergrads. Image credit: MIT. Click to enlarge MIT engineers recently delivered a tiny satellite to the International Space Station. About the size of a soccer ball, this tiny robot is designed to demonstrate how future satellites could be built much much smaller. It’s equipped with a set …
Tiny particles of meteorites with portions of nitrogen and hydrogen. Image credit: Henner Busemann. Click to enlarge When the Solar System first formed billions of years ago, organic molecules – the building blocks of life – were churned into the mix that went on to create the planets. Scientists from the Carnegie Institution have developed …
Continue reading “New Technique for Finding Organic Molecules in Meteorites”