Category: Space
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Networking the Solar System
When the human race inevitably expands off planet Earth, we’ll naturally want to take our internet with us – over the past 15 years or so, the internet really has become an integral part of our lives! In fact, even as you’re reading this, 300 gigawatts of electricity worldwide will have been used to transfer…
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Mars One: The Martian Chronicles or Big Brother Live on Mars?
This week we have seen beautiful Venus transiting directly between the Earth and the Sun, which brought plenty of the media attention, and yesterday one of the greatest science fiction writers Ray Bradbury died during Venus transit. He was best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories collection The Martian Chronicles. Both the Earth…
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The transit of Venus 2012 as seen from Cairns (Australia)
Credits: GLORIA Project (www.gloria-project.eu)
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Dragon’s Rendez-Vous Day
For those who may not be familiar, The SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft is developed, and built by the American company Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX, as it is more commonly known. You may find very informative and interesting article on SpaceX Dragon written by Kevin Orrman-Rossiter. Today SpaceX #Dragon is proceeding toward rendezvous with #ISS. The International Space Station mission management team completed a…
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Here be Dragons
On May 11, a Dragon will mate with the International Space station. Rather than some mythical creature, this Dragon is of human artifice. The Dragon’s rendezvous and berthing with the International Space Station presages a new chapter in human exploration of space. The significance of this event is Dragon is a reusable spacecraft, developed, and…
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These rocks just got a little bit older
Have you ever had a moment when person responds to you in a way that just makes you feel a little bit older than you did before? You comment, for example, about a music group to someone, only to be met with that incredulous stare that conveys the message to you that their parents liked…
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Who found the water on the Moon?
At just over two tonnes, the second stage of an Atlas V rocket, makes for an unusual ‘kinetic probe’. Nonetheless on October 9, 2009 NASA deliberately impacted a spent Centaur rocket into the lunar south polar crater Cabeus. The target area was a permanently shadowed region within this crater. The impact, not surprisingly, ejected a…
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Weighty thoughts on antimatter
A pulse of particles speeds into the vacuum chamber. Positrons, 20,000,000 antimatter particles, clumped in a pulse one nanosecond deep. Like a silent, angry swarm they are targeted into a porous silica target. The positrons are confined by a magnetic field, increasing their interaction with the silica. Some attract electrons and synthesize into positronium, a…
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Space worms
We begin with a confession. There comes a time in every boy’s life that they realise, or rather they make peace with the fact, that they’ll never play professional sports. Basketball, rugby, football, hockey… the sport of choice changes, but the realisation stays the same. I mention this only as an analogy. A segue into…
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Earth’s City Lights
This image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s surface. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but…