Space

Chang'E-4 Probes 120 Feet Into The Dark Side Of The Moon

The Chang'E-4 mission (CE-4) landed on the eastern floor of the Van Kármán crater, near the Moon's south pole, on Jan. 3, 2019. It deployed its Yutu-2 rover, which uses Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) to investigate the underground it roams and fou ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 27 2020 - 5:08pm

Why A Ball Thrown To Earth From Orbit "Boomerangs". Can Astronauts Hit Earth With A Ball, Arrow Or Bullet?

Can an astronaut throw a ball to the Earth? The answer is Yes, and No. Depends what you mean by hitting the Earth. First, if you throw a ball towards the Earth- yes it's traveling that way when you throw it. So, it is natural to think that no matter ...

Article - Robert Walker - Feb 28 2020 - 12:36pm

LNT: We Can Now Grow Lettuce In Space, And Even Bathed In High Energy Cosmic Rays, It's Just Fine

A new paper reports again about the successful cultivation of red romaine lettuce, Lactuca sativa cv ‘Outredgeous’ plants from surface-sterilized seeds grown in Vegetable Production Systems growth chambers on the International Space Station during the year ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 7 2020 - 8:00am

WASP-76b, The Planet Where It Rains Iron

640 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces is a planet where the day side temperature exceeds 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough enough to vaporize metal. And it does. Then, on planet tidally locked planet WASP-76b, winds carry the vapor to the ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 11 2020 - 7:07pm

NASA's Plan To Reduce Planetary Protection For Mars Risks Accidentally Extinguishing Second Genesis Of Life Before We Find It

Right now all our missions to Mars are sterilized to protect it from any Earth life that could hitch a ride and confuse the searches. A report by the “Planetary Protection Independent Review Board” recommends that NASA treats most of Mars similarly to the ...

Article - Robert Walker - Mar 19 2020 - 7:19pm

Urea In Astronaut Pee Could Be Used To Build Moon Bases

I'm not all that excited about manned missions in space because it is a struggle for NASA to even build a space telescope without going 13 years over budget, but it's worth doing basic research on how an outpost on Luna might be built. It will re ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 30 2020 - 2:30pm

Projects To Get To Space As Easily As We Cross Oceans- A Million Flights A Year Perhaps- Will We Be Ready?

Elon Musk's ideas are in the news right now, rockets with first stages that fly back to a soft landing under auto pilot. But you might be surprised to learn how many other ideas there are under active development, for low cost ways to get into orbit. ...

Article - Robert Walker - May 18 2020 - 1:13pm

R5519 And The Cosmic Ring Of Fire From 11 Billion BC

The galaxy, named R5519, is 11 billion light-years from our Solar System and it is making stars at a rate 50 times greater than the Milky Way. The hole at its centre is truly massive, with a diameter two billion times longer than the distance between the E ...

Article - News Staff - May 26 2020 - 9:43am

NASA SpaceX Demo Two: Bob Behnken And Doug Hurley Will Make History UPDATED

When a SpaceX crewed Dragon launches atop a Falcon 9 carrying the first astronauts launched from American soil by the United States, they will be making history, setting NASA on a trajectory for the Moon and beyond.  For a long time, private companies bei ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - May 30 2020 - 10:10am

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, Dark Energy, And Cosmic Expansion

A new paper uses a combination of cosmic voids – large expanding bubbles of space containing very few galaxies – and the faint imprint of sound waves in the very early Universe, known as baryon acoustic oscillations, that can be seen in the distribution of ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2020 - 11:44am