A New Space Habitat Design Simulates Gravity by Spinning. Moving Out Instead of trying to build settlements on the surface of the Moon or Mars, a team of engineers believes that we ought to expand humanity’s reach into the cosmos by constructing orbital habitats from scratch.
To that effect, the Texas A&M University aerospace engineers designed their own orbital habitat, which they say could host up to 8,000 people, according to Universe Today. NASA’s New Moon-Bound Space Suits Will Get a Boost From AI. - ESA commissions world’s first space debris removal. ClearSpace-1 will be the first space mission to remove an item of debris from orbit, planned for launch in 2025.
The mission is being procured as a service contract with a startup-led commercial consortium, to help establish a new market for in-orbit servicing, as well as debris removal. Following a competitive process, a consortium led by Swiss startup ClearSpace – a spin-off company established by an experienced team of space debris researchers based at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) research institute – will be invited to submit their final proposal, before starting the project next March.
“This is the right time for such a mission,” says Luc Piguet, founder and CEO of ClearSpace. “The space debris issue is more pressing than ever before. Today we have nearly 2000 live satellites in space and more than 3000 failed ones. “That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue. (29) Where will humans live if Earth becomes uninhabitable? Where might humans live in space?
Life in a distant future as imagined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be, in many ways, like life today. People will socialise, commute to work and have weekends to rest. The only difference is that we will be living in huge spinning cylinders that closely mimic our planet, but are actually in orbit around it. The world’s richest man, according to Forbes, is one of several prominent people who are thinking seriously about what humans might do if they ever have to develop habitats beyond Earth. NASA Research: Astronauts Are Getting Clots, Bizarre Blood Flow. According to a shocking report by NASA scientists, blood flow can stop and even reverse in the upper bodies of astronauts.
The study could have some major implications about prolonged trips through deep space, as we’re still trying to nail down the exact effects of spending long periods in microgravity. The study looked at periodic ultrasound tests of 11 healthy astronauts who staffed the International Space Station. The results were alarming: blood flow had either stagnated or reversed in the left internal jugular vein, a major blood vessel on the side of the neck, in seven crew members. The tests also found a clot and a partial clot in two of the crew members after their return to Earth. A paper of the study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Wednesday.
“This was an unexpected finding,” Michael Stenger, senior author and manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told NBC News. And that could have some very serious effects on astronauts’ health. Nasa's Voyager 2 sends back its first message from interstellar space. Twelve billion miles from Earth, there is an elusive boundary that marks the edge of the sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space.
When Voyager 2, the longest-running space mission, crossed that frontier more than 40 years after its launch it sent a faint signal from the other side that scientists have now decoded. The Nasa craft is the second ever to travel beyond the heliosphere, the bubble of supersonic charged particles streaming outwards from the sun. Despite setting off a month ahead of its twin, Voyager 1, it crossed the threshold into interstellar space more than six years behind, after taking the scenic route across the solar system and providing what remain the only close-up images of Uranus and Neptune. India pulls in the sharpest Moon surface images ever taken from orbit. Things haven’t quite gone to plan for India's Chandrayaan-2 mission, with the team losing the spacecraft’s Vikram lander following a touchdown attempt last month.
But there is still plenty of science to come as the probe continues to circle the Moon, with the latest imagery relayed by the orbiting spacecraft revealing the lunar surface in unparalleled detail. NASA: Rover May Have Found Remnants of Ancient Martian Oasis. Gale Crater Mystery Three billion years ago, Mars looked very different from how it does now.
And ever since we’ve been able to land rovers on the planet’s surface, we’ve been trying to get peeks of its distant past. The 100-mile Gale Crater, which is believed to be the result of a massive ancient impact, has scientists particularly fascinated. Hubble Telescope Solves a Galactic Identity Crisis for Quasars. Ever since their discovery in the late 1950s, bright beams of galactic light known as quasars — distant objects emitting bright light to the cosmos — have puzzled astronomers.
However, a new study has shed more light on the mysterious cosmic objects and settles a 20-year-old astronomical debate. Quasars are galactic nuclei located at the center of their host galaxies. Their bright light is powered by supermassive black holes, and they achieve a brightness that's equivalent to 600 trillion suns. For decades, scientists have debated whether a Seyfert galaxy — a class of galaxy that is known to have a quasar-like nucleus — is of one or two types. Chandrayaan-2: Indian mission blasts off for the moon. India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission is en route to the moon.
On Monday, at about 2:43 local time, the India Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched its Chandrayaan-2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, off the southeastern coast of India. Gorgeous 'Atlas of Space' Smashes the Textbook View of the Solar System. Lutz is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington who spends her evenings turning public data sets into hyperdetailed works of art.
In her new project, called the Atlas of Space, she's borrowed more than a decade of data compiled by the likes of NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and other science organizations to create some of the most accurate maps of the solar system that will fit on your bedroom wall. [10 Interesting Places in the Solar System We'd Like to Visit] The map shown here, which Lutz posted to her website on June 10, was created from orbital data taken from a dozen different public databases.
Going above and beyond most textbook space maps, this guide to the cosmos shows the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune in gorgeous, chaotic detail. "This map shows each asteroid at its exact position on New Years' Eve 1999," Lutz wrote on her site. This is our solar system in macro. Evolutionary Biologist: Mars Colonists Will Mutate Really Fast. Gaze Into the Abyss: The First-Ever Image of a Black Hole. Organisms Survived on the Outside of the Space Station.
Beautiful New Photo Shows the Moon With Earth In the Background. Blue Origin to make 10th flight test of space tourist rocket. Blue Origin, the rocket company headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is poised to launch the 10th test flight of its unmanned New Shepard rocket on Wednesday as it competes with Virgin Galactic to become the first to carry tourists on brief visits to space. SpaceX Orbital Starship Prototype Built By June 2019 and Orbital Launch Might Be in 2019. Elon Musk has tweeted that the first orbital Starship upper stage prototype should be completed by June 2019. He has stated that the Super Heavy first stage will start construction in the spring.
Previously, Elon Musk has targeted the Super Heavy Starship to reach orbit by 2020. Elon has said the odds of making it to orbit by 2020 are at least 60% and rising rapidly. If the Starhopper has successful testing from February through July, then an orbital test could happen in the latter half of 2019. SpaceX will be able to build the 38 Raptor engines for a full Super Heavy Starship. If the new engines work and the new design enable this shortened development schedule then it seems SpaceX would try for orbit in late 2019.
Vast New Particle Accelerator Would Dwarf Large Hadron Collider. First green leaf on moon dies as temperatures plummet. The appearance of a single green leaf hinted at a future in which astronauts would grow their own food in space, potentially setting up residence at outposts on the moon or other planets. Now, barely after it had sprouted, the cotton plant onboard China’s lunar rover has died. The plant relied on sunlight at the moon’s surface, but as night arrived at the lunar far side and temperatures plunged as low as -170C, its short life came to an end. Prof Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, who led the design of the experiment, said its short lifespan had been anticipated. Gizmodo. Physicist: Black Holes Could be Portals for Hyperspace Travel.
Come Sail Away For years, scientists have theorized that black holes could serve as portals for interdimensional travel. But there’s always been a problem: how could a hyperspace traveler ever approach a black hole without getting torn to teeny-tiny shreds by the black hole’s unholy gravitational forces? It turns out that some black holes are gentler than others, according to University of Massachusetts Dartmouth physicists. If a black hole is large enough and rotating quickly enough, astronauts would have a nice, smooth ride the whole way down, according to research published in the journal Physical Review D.
Aging Voyager 1 spacecraft undermines idea that dark matter is tiny black holes. Humanity’s most far-flung spacecraft, NASA’s 41-year-old Voyager 1, has poked a hole in a long-shot theory of dark matter. Some theorists have argued that the mysterious, unseen stuff, which makes up 85% of the universe’s matter, could consist of countless black holes lingering from the big bang. But Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 and slipped out of the solar system 6 years ago, sees no signs of such hordes, a pair of theoretical physicists reports. The data don’t kill the idea that dark matter is black holes entirely, however, as Voyager 1 can detect only tiny black holes. “I never thought we’d be able to contribute in any way to studying dark matter,” says Alan Cummings, a space scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who has worked on Voyager 1 since 1973 and who was not involved in the analysis.
“That’s great!” For decades, astrophysicists have thought some sort of unseen matter provides the gravity needed to hold galaxies like our Milky Way together. Far side of the moon: China's Chang'e 4 probe makes historic touchdown. Four Legal Challenges to Resolve Before Settling on Mars. Nasa’s Mars InSight probe touches down on red planet. After a seven-month, 300m-mile journey, Nasa’s Mars InSight probe has reached its destination and touched down near the red planet’s equator. - The Washington Post. Sorry Elon Musk, But It's Now Clear That Colonizing Mars Is Unlikely — And A Bad Idea. Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has a vision for colonising Mars, based on a big rocket, nuclear explosions and an infrastructure to transport millions of people there. This was seen as highly ambitious but technically challenging in several ways. NASA's plans to end the ISS could put its Mars missions in danger. Surprise! Virgin Galactic Just Did A Test Launch of Its SpaceShipTwo Spaceplane.
EARLY MORNING SURPRISE. At around 6 AM PT Thursday morning, Virgin Galactic, the aerospace company founded by Richard Branson, took to Twitter to casually announce plans to test one of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spaceplanes. Roughly three-and-a-half hours later, the spaceplane, named the VSS Unity, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, CA. About 20 minutes after that, it touched down.
No livestream, no press release — just a dozen or so Twitter posts, and it was over. Nasa Mars rover finds organic matter in ancient lake bed. Nasa’s veteran Curiosity rover has found complex organic matter buried and preserved in ancient sediments that formed a vast lake bed on Mars more than 3bn years ago. Made In Space Wins NASA Contract for Next-Gen 'Vulcan' Manufacturing System. Made In Space just took another step toward constructing big, complex structures off Earth.
New NASA Plan for Mars Is Moderately-Terrifying-Sounding, Also, Completely-Awesome: Robotic. Bees. Mars: It’s far. Costs money to explore. And right now, we’ve got a rover just sitting there doing nothing. Astronomers may be closing in on source of mysterious fast radio bursts. NASA Is Planning the First-Ever Interstellar Mission. X Launches (and Lands) Used Rocket on Historic NASA Cargo Mission.
SpaceX launched and landed a used rocket today (Dec. 15), pulling off yet another spaceflight double play during a delivery mission for NASA that gets the company a big step closer to its goal of complete reusability. SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off today at 10:36 a.m. EST (1536 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending the company's robotic Dragon capsule on a resupply run to the International Space Station (ISS) that just might include some Christmas presents for the station’s crew.
Six-decade-old space mystery solved with shoebox-sized satellite called a CubeSat. NASA To Reveal Kepler Breakthrough: What Did Google AI Find? I Don't Think You're Ready for This, Jelly. SpaceX Just Broke a Record With Their 16th Successful Launch of 2017. A Eulogy for Cassini. Junkyard In The Sky [Infographic] A Spacecraft Thinner Than Human Hair Wraps Up and Destroys Space Debris. How to Build a Dyson Swarm. Why asteroids loom as the space frontier for mining and manufacturing – GeekWire. The Space Junk Problem Is About to Get a Whole Lot Gnarlier. Top Air Force Officials: Space Now is a Warfighting Domain. SpaceX Just Broke a Major Milestone in Commercial Space Travel. We May Have Uncovered the First Ever Evidence of the Multiverse.
NASA Finds ‘Iceball’ Planet. We Just Entered a New Age in Space. Here's Proof. Star's seven Earth-sized worlds set record. A Real Life "Hibernation Chamber" is Being Made For Deep Space Travel. Living in Space Proven to Transform Humans on a Genetic Level. Our Universe Has Trillions of Galaxies, Hubble Study. Why Elon Musk's Mars Vision Needs 'Some Real Imagination' Universe has 2 trillion galaxies, astronomers say. Parting Shots: Rosetta's Last Views of Comet 67P.
Gizmodo. Explicit cookie consent. X's Elon Musk Unveils Interplanetary Spaceship to Colonize Mars. Path to Mars Should Be Flexible, Experts Agree. Living on the Red Planet: NASA Astronauts Emerge From Year-Long Mars Simulation. SETI has observed a “strong” signal that may originate from a Sun-like star. "Earth-Like" Exoplanet Discovered In The Nearest Star System To Our Own. Gizmodo. The Edge Of The Universe Is Closer Than Scientists Previously Thought. Scientists simulating Mars mission on Hawaii long for end to year in isolation. Mars' Ancient Lakes: Further Proof The Red Planet Once Had Water.
Moon Express: The US Government Just Gave A Private Company Permission To Land on the Moon. Martians Might Be Real. That Makes Mars Exploration Way More Complicated. Moon Express approved for first private moon landing — Quartz. SpaceX sends cargo to the International Space Station, nails the landing. SpaceX sends cargo to the International Space Station, nails the landing. $1 billion Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission directly measuring interface of Earth's magnetic field with interplanetary field. Advancing Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitats for Human Stasis to Mars. Tensegrity Approaches to In-Space Construction of a 1g Growable Habitat. A Major Mystery About Earth's Magnetic Field Has Just Been Solved. Starshot Breakthrough Initiative for laser pushed interstellar nanocraft.
NASA Cuts Funds for Mars Landing Technology Work. Spacex lands another rocket stage on the floating platform and Elon tweets Spacex may need to increase size of rocket storage. 3d printing of rocket parts and liquified natural gas fuel could also dramatically lower launch costs. Suburban space oddities. Forbes Welcome. The Futuristic Space Tourism Projects That Are Actually Underway Today. Spacex planning to launch every 2 to 3 weeks and achieve 70% landing success rate in 2016. Uk.businessinsider. Mars Needs Colonists Who Eat Meat And Sleep Late. Hawking: Humans at risk of lethal 'own goal' SpaceX Releases Photos of Its Undamaged Falcon 9. SpaceX Successfully Completes a Vertical Landing at Cape Canaveral. These Are the Most Bad-Ass Photos from the SpaceX Rocket Landing. NASA plans to 'move out' of the ISS on its way to the Moon.
Earth surrounded by dense, hairy filaments of dark matter. Hubble Spots Biggest Sample of Faint, Early Galaxies (Photos) Earth Bloomed Early: A Fermi Paradox Solution? The International Space Station is home to potentially dangerous bacteria.
Lunar Fuel and refueling greatly reduce cost of a Mars Mission. Google Lunar X Prize team signs contract to send spacecraft to moon. NASA Has Already Hired Someone To Make Sure We Don’t Destroy Mars, Too.