Russians recovered a furry crew that spent a month in microgravity this week, only to confirm most arrived back on earth dead. Sad, but not as bad as it sounds: Arstechnica — A Russian spacecraft containing 45 mice, 8 gerbils, and 15 newts returned to Earth on Sunday. The spacecraft, a modified Bion-M life sciences satellite, …
Category Archive: Space
May 12 2013
Would someone please think of the whiskey?
Space has a lot of resources, technically it has all the resources. Some of them are obvious, some serendipitous. Aside from the mountains of platinum group metals or nickel-iron and oxygen floating around free for the taking, in addition to the nearly inexhaustible energy sources, micro-gravity is a new and to date poorly utilized …
Feb 15 2013
Siberia takes another big hit from space, shock waves hit nearby towns
Second Update 7 PM Cdentral: This is now looks completely unrelated to the larger NEO. But interestingly, there are conspiracy theories now popping up, mostly in Russia, that this was an attack or test attack of some sort from an unfriendly nation and the Russian government is covering that up for political reasons. Or variations …
Feb 07 2013
Updated: Comet ISON orbit and viewing possibilities
Comet ISON will pass within 40 million mile of earth on Christmas of this year and be in decent position for viewing by eye or small scope throughout the fall of 2013. Predicting the brightness of a comet is real dicey, it depends on what the comet is made of and how many times it has been close …
Jan 20 2013
Radio wavelengths bring dim nebula into exquisite high resolution
Not long ago this object didn’t even have a name. It was just a dim hazy splotch in most telescopes, if they could see it at all. After being imaged by a high res wide radio telescope array in New Mexico, the one made famous in the movie Contact, it was christened the manatee nebula …
Sep 20 2012
Best space porn of the year
TIME magazine online has posted the best astronomy shots of the year. I suppose that’s a subjective call, there are so many magnificent ones. We are living smack dab in the middle of the greatest age of human discovery ever known. If only more of us could be a part of it. A couple of shots linked below to whet your …
Sep 01 2012
NASA Dawn prepares to leave Vesta for Ceres
Left: Vesta as seen by Hubble before Dawn, Right: and after The Dawn spacecraft is preparing to leave the asteroid Vesta for its next exciting target: the dwarf planet Ceres. Departure is scheduled for Sept 4th:
Aug 25 2012
Neil Armstrong has passed away
The first human to walk on the moon has taken one big step into the great beyond. Neil Armstrong, pilot and first to step off the LEM footpad with the immortal words captured above has passed away:
Jul 29 2012
Cosmos fileld with voracious vampire stars
We know there’s some weird and rare stellar denizens in the cosmic jungle, galaxies hollowe dinto rungs like giant Ferris Wheels, dark matter pockets, pocean planets and diamond worlds. But it turns out one species of misfit may be way more common than thought. Cannibal stars, sometimes referred to as vampires, that suck the life blood out of …
Jul 14 2012
Modern day planet hunter lands big prize
If you want to know who murdered Pluto, it was Mike Brown! Mike greatly expanded the our understanding of the solar system with the discovery of Eris and several other Kuiper Belt Objects objects. He and two team members have landed the ‘Nobel Prize’ of astronomy:
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