A couple of “Natty Light” enthusiasts approached the brewer, Natural Ice with the idea to make the mediocre frat-house beer slightly more remarkable by making it the first to be sent into space. Their spacecraft’ was a styrofoam cooler, a GPS tracking device, and an HD camera, launched into space with a weather balloon last week.
For centuries, people have been looking up at the night sky, admiring beautiful constellations and pondering the meaning of things greater than themselves. As beautiful as the view is, this video shows what things look like from the other side, and it’s pretty amazing.
NASA wants to put somebody on an asteroid by 2025 because they don’t know how else to get people’s attention. And to succeed in this entirely worthwhile endeavour, they’ve designed a mechanism by which to harpoon asteroids, so that vehicles can land on the thing despite the weakened gravity. Call me Ishmael.
The unmanned spacecraft, Tiangong-1, which translates awesomely to Heavenly Palace, is set to blast off tonight from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu province, marking the start of China’s first rendezvous and docking mission. That guy is set to take off between 13h16 and 13h31 GMT.
Remember that defunct NASA satellite that was going to fall to earth some time, they just couldn’t tell us when or where? Well, don’t worry – they’ve told us that it’s definitely going to come screaming down to the planet’s surface some time this week. This Friday, actually.
Because what every good recession needs is a plan to go to space. NASA today announced their new launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), which should be able to take astronauts past the moon to near-Earth asteroids, and eventually to Mars some time in the 2030s.
Screw climate change, we’ve found a new home. Well, I mean that’s my attitude whenever astronomers says they’ve found new planets within the “Goldiclocks zone” of core temperature – like the one European astronomers announced yesterday, the catchy-sounding HD85512b, which fits life support parameters, and is a little over three times the size of Earth.
Awesome. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), NASA’s defunct, 60 000 kg baby, will be re-entering Earth’s atmosphere sometime later this month or in early October, and NASA doesn’t really know when or where it’s going to happen. What they do know is that it’s going to leave a 800km-wide debris footprint, somewhere. Heads up.
Dave MacKay, 53-year-old British pilot, will be the first captain of Virgin Galactic‘s commercial space fleet, taking up the role first with the maiden voyage of SpaceShipTwo, scheduled for 2013. MacKay has over 30 years of regular flying experience, but like pretty much everybody, he’s wanted to fly spaceships since he was a kid.
I am concerned. There’s an alarming trend that I’ve noticed, and it’s all getting a bit out of control. Every new generation of vehicles emerges fatter than the last. I drove a new Opel Astra last month which barely scraped into my garage. An Astra. It’s hardly a monster truck. Yet every new property development I’ve encountered is essentially a maze of shoeboxes. Are we forgetting the ultimate luxury?
Ending a seven-year mission, NASA has decided to cut off communications with the Mars rover Spirit. Data was last received from Spirit in March 2010, and it hasn’t been heard from since – the thinking is that the rover was damaged during the martian winter when there wasn’t enough solar power for its survival heaters to run.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, the commercial spaceflight vehicle, recently had its seventh test flight, dropped from a height of 15km to see if it could adjust speed and bearing with various wing configurations. Which sounds technically fancy, but really just looks insanely cool.
SpaceX – the guys who last year became the first to launch a private spaceship into orbit and bring it home – are planning on sending humans to Mars within 10 to 20 years, according to a Wall Street Journal interview with CEO Elon Musk. These guys have an X in their name, so we should take them seriously.
Yesterday, Virgin America held an opening ceremony for their new Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport; press were ushered onto a waiting aircraft, and told to keep an eye out for Virgin-Galactic-related-things after takeoff. After about 20 minutes they were asked to look out of their windows, because White Knight 2 and Spaceship 2 were doing fly-byes.
You read that headline and thought, why should I care? Well I’ll tell you why, cause giant holes in the moon are a big deal, especially since they present an amazing real-estate opportunity.
Ha! Yes. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is looking at plans to send a humanoid robot to the International Space Station. Except by humanoid I mean it will look attempt to look sexy but end up being insanely creepy. Also, it’s going to post photos and text to Twitter.
Our Science and Technology minister didn’t mince her words announcing the arrival of SANSA (South African National Space Agency) yesterday using terms like “launch” and ”local scientific research sector” at free will. She even went so far as to say a decade from now South Africa would be a thriving space nation. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of Mzansi in orbit.