Space

What do engineer Burt Rutan, hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, and game programmer John Carmack have in common? Answer: they've built the first private earth-to-space rocket, space station, and lunar…

Just how much would you pay to go into space? $12000 for a satellite plus launch, like me? Or perhaps... $300 to build a high-altitude balloon camera? Or, if $300 is too high, how about getting a…

The Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI) has detected a temporary radiation belt around Dione, one of the moons of Saturn.  The discovery will be presented at the…

New beautiful images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have been released recently, and they are, as always, a pleasure to behold. The HST was serviced in a mission by the Space Shuttle Atlantis…

NASA's 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope still has a few tricks up its sleeve!  New images were released today from Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3.  Installed back in March, WFC3…

Old notion: Giant clouds of gas and dust to collapse inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until igniting nuclear fusion and forming stars.  New notion:  It's more than just…

We have been in an anomalously long Solar Minimum.  The sun has an 11 year cycle from Minimum to Maximum.  But the cycles are (like most things in nature) not exact, and some are longer…

ESA's XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope has uncovered the first close-up of a white dwarf star, circling a companion star, that could explode into a particular kind of supernova. Well, in a few…

Welcome to Traceback, where I find articles other people have written on Project Calliope.  Having publically announced less than a week ago and with just 2 pieces written, I can safely…

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was closed Monday as wildfires came within two miles of the facility.  The decision to give most of the 5,000 employees the day off was made Sunday evening.…