Here’s this weeks carnival of space with spaceplanes, dark energy, cosmology and a lot more. Next Big Future posts about how the Skylon space plane got a thumbs up with a 52 page review from the UK space agency, James Woodward talks about the scientific history of science, gravity and the Mach Effect and a post [...]
Hubble Celebrates One Complete Orbit of Neptune around the Sun
Neptune was discovered 165 years ago. In that time it has made one complete orbit of the Sun and is now in exactly the same place as when it was discovered all those years ago. The Hubble space telescope has taken anniversary pictures to celebrate this event. Neptune, as you probably know if you paid [...]
The Best Evidence yet Is Found for Enceladus to Contain a Salt Water Ocean
For the first time it has been shown that the Cassini-Huygens probe’s sampling of icy spray shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains large salt rich grains. The spray was sampled by Cassini in 2005. The plumes were coming from the so-called “tiger stripe” surface fractures at the moon’s south pole. These tiger stripes are thought [...]
A New View of the Galaxy Centaurus A by Hubble
Hubble has used its wide field camera 3 to give the most detailed view of this Galaxy ever. The image shows detail that has never been seen before in the dusty portion of the Galaxy. Centaurus A is also known as NGC 5128 and is a relatively nearby galaxy in astronomical terms. It is close [...]
5 New Projects to Look for Alien Life
Five new projects have been announced by the NASA astrobiology science and technology for exploring planets program (ASTEP). ASTEP promotes the search for life on other planets and supports research and exploration of the Earth’s most remote places. New technology is used by ASTEP to seek, identify and characterise life that exists or did exist [...]
New Rocky Type Planet Found by Kepler
The Kepler telescope, which has been looking for planets outside our solar system, has found a new rocky planet a bit like a scorched molten Earth. It orbits around a sun like star called Kepler-10 in only 45 days. It is so close to its parent star it is not expected to have any liquid [...]
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Science Fiction Becomes Fact As 10 New Jupiter Sized Planets Found in Deep Space
10 new Jupiter sized planets have been found floating alone in space, and I mean alone, well away from any star. They are sometimes called orphan planets and have been the subject of science fiction and science theory for a long time but now there is evidence that they exist. The survey shows that for [...]
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New Image of Jets from a Supermassive Black Hole in Another Galaxy
Particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole have been captured in an image provided by radio telescopes located in the southern hemisphere. The image shows an area less than 4.2 light years across. This makes this image the highest resolution image of a galactic jet made to date. Jets and Lobes from the Black [...]
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A New Map of the Roughness and Smoothness of the Moon Created
Planetary scientists use the look of planets and moons to find out information about their past. New maps of the moon have been put together that reveal the slopes and roughness of the moon’s surface. These maps are based on data which has been collected by the lunar orbiter laser altimeter on NASA’s lunar reconnaissance [...]
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New Search for Alien Life on 86 Planets Starts
A massive search for alien life on 86 exoplanets has just started. The search will use a large radio telescope in West Virginia to listen for signs of life. These 86 planets have been picked from a list of 1235 planets which have been identified by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. 24 hours of data will [...]
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Fractures Found on Mars May Indicate Life
Deep fractures have been found around the giant Isidis impact basin on Mars. This area called NiliFossae is of interest to scientists because telescopes on Earth measured an increase in methane in Mars’s atmosphere over this area. This could mean life or it could be geological. Some of these incisions are up to 500 m [...]
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China’s New Space Station Plans Released
The China manned space engineering office has released plans for a 60 ton space station made up of three capsules and a cargo transport for supplies. It looks like it might be public friendly as well as they have asked for suggestions for names for the space station. The space station core module will be [...]
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A Completely Automatic Robot Jet Fighter Passes Further Tests
The X-47B looks exactly the same as the B-2 stealth bomber but there is one major difference, it is totally automated. The X-47B is the US Navy’s newest UAV and it’s the very first robotic fighter to exist. Robotic predator and Reaper drones that are currently in Iraq and Afghanistan are controlled by pilots on [...]
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Manned Spaceflight Versus Unmanned Spaceflight
Are manned missions just a waste of time? Space agencies and presidents insist that manned missions are necessary and will always be in their programmes. The reason normally given is that an astronaut embodies the spirit of the space programme and can also act swiftly and creatively in ways that machines cannot. The critics dismiss [...]
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Messenger Returns Images of Mercury from Orbit for the First Time.
NASA’s Messenger spacecraft (MErcury Surface,Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) has become the first craft to enter orbit around Mercury and now we have the first picture from orbit. Messenger has taken six years to get into orbit around Mercury. If the Messenger probe had been sent to Mercury on a direct course it would have [...]
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Crystal Clear Pictures of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster
The Suzaku observatory has recently made observations by X ray of Perseus, a nearby cluster of galaxies. They are the clearest to date. Galaxy clusters are millions of light years across. Most of the matter these galaxies are made up of comes in the form of X ray gases that fill up the space between [...]
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Why Is an Atmosphere Lost over Time?
There are a lot of planetary atmospheres in the solar system. They vary a lot and this can be seen by comparing Earth and Venus which are of the same size and mass roughly, The surface of Venus is extremely hot which is caused by an atmosphere of carbon dioxide that has the weight of [...]
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Satellites Monitor The Japanese Devastation
Satellite imaging of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 has been invaluable in giving a clear picture of the extent of the devastation and will help in the relief effort.What is called the International Charter ” space and major disasters” was called up by the Japanese government on the same [...]
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Mars Rover Opportunity Poses for a Quick Picture
Opportunity (NASA’s Mars exploration Rover) has been exploring a crater on Mars called Santa Maria and has nearly finished its three-month examination. The picture has been taken from orbit of opportunity posing just on the edge. The pictures were taken by the high resolution imaging science experiment (HIRISE). The tracks from the west that opportunity [...]
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Far Side of the Moon Imaged by the LRO
The moons far side has been imaged in extreme detail by the lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO). A mosaic is being made of the moon by the LRO and this image is one of many building up into a map providing a global view of the moon to a resolution of 100 m per pixel. (Click on [...]
