Tag: Space

  • Technological Breakthroughs needed to visit other Solar Systems

    The more we look into the Universe the more obvious it becomes that our Solar System and potentially our own Earth is not as unique as we once thought.  Just this week NASA released news about Kepler-452b which is very similar to Earth both in size, its parent Star and its distance from the star. Today we are…

  • And then there were six

    This morning Oleg Kononenko, Andre Kuipers and Don Pettit successfully launched from Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft heading to the space station to complete the full Expedition 30 crew and once again return the station to a six man crew. Despite the bitter cold weather, the crew launched on time and will now spend two days…

  • NASA Discovers First Earth-size Planets

    Two weeks ago NASA announced the first planet is the habitable zone of another star.  Yesterday they announced the discovery of the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone but they are the smallest exoplanets…

  • Stratolaunch Systems

    Today we return to our commercial space series as we look at a new player to the field. Paul G. Allen and Burt Rutan announced yesterday that they were once again partnering to revolutionize the space launch industry.  Their last adventure led to the Ansari X Prize winning SpaceShipOne craft which achieved three sub-orbital flights…

  • Kepler – A Search for Habitable Planets

    This week the Kepler mission confirmed its First Planet in Habitable Zone of a Sun-like Star, they increased the number of planet candidates to 2365, they celebrated 1000 days in space and finally held their first science conference.  Today we take a look at the Kepler mission and what it has discovered so far. The…

  • The History of Mars Exploration (NASA)

    To follow up the successful launch of MSL, which NASA confirmed last night was inserted into an almost perfect trajectory towards Mars, today we take a look at the history of successful Mars Exploration missions by NASA. The History of Mars Exploration Year Name Type Summary 1964 Mariner 4 Flyby First spacecraft to flyby of…

  • MSL – Launch Pictures

    Pictures from this morning’s launch of MSL (captured from NASA TV)

  • Mars Science Laboratory – Curiosity

    This morning the massive Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) launched torwards Mars.  Scheduled to land in August 2012 the rover will bring a host of scientific instruments to the planet and continue the exploration that started in 1975 with the Viking landers. Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) By far the largest rover every launched to another planet…

  • Mars Exploration Rovers

    Tomorrow NASA will be launching the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) to begin an eight month journey to the red planet.  Today we take a look at it’s predecessors the highly successful Mars Exploration Rovers. Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Launched in 2003 the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity were sent to explore the surface and geology…

  • NASA Budget

    This week the new Budget was signed into law and NASA’s funding for the Commercial Crew development has been slashed.  So what does this mean for the future? As we are currently looking at Commercial Space and the different teams who are involved it seems appropriate to review this further and see what real impact…