Tag: International Space Station
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Australia from orbit
From December 19th last year, Chris Hadfield has been living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit roughly 400 km above planet Earth. Seeing 15 sunrises every day as the station tracks its way above our planet, the ISS, to quote Hadfield himself, “weighs 500 tonnes and is the size of 5 NHL hockey…
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Weekly Science Picks
It’s been rather a turbulent week, all told. There’s been a lot going on in the news, both good and bad. Hopefully, this little handful of science news items will help you finish the last week and begin this next one on a lighthearted note! NASA’s Kepler mission has found a star system which…
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New light on dark matter: space station magnet attracts praise
Nobel prizewinner Samuel Ting, early Thursday morning (March 4, 2:00 AEDT), announced the first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) search for dark matter. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters, provide the most compelling direct evidence to date for the existence of this mysterious matter. In short, the AMS results have shown an…
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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…