Browsing: Space exploration

There are numerous challenges that come with outer Earth colonization of distant planets like Mars, or our neighboring moon, and one of the major issues scientists have addressed is reproduction. Part of a  recently published study, scientists have tracked the development of worm cultures in space in an experiment designed to study how micro-gravity and radiation has affected them. […]

On November 26, after countless delays, budget overruns and buckets of sweat, humankind’s most capable machine of landing on and traveling through the red planet will finally touch base and launch towards its ambitious destination. The Curiosity rover‘s lift off is currently scheduled for 10:02 a.m. EST, this Saturday. Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory […]

This year, mankind celebrated 50 years of space exploration since Yuri Gagarin‘s pioneering flight around Earth’s orbit, however the American Museum of Natural History  is more concerned to set its eyes towards future, once with the opening of its new “Beyond Planet Earth” exhibit, which features tomorrow’s space age wonders, as well as relics from the […]

If the Americans and NASA are having some issues regarding their space program at the moment, the Russians are doing just fine; recently an unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship loaded with 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment traveled and docked the International Space Station without any notable incidents or accidents. “Capture. We have indicator mode,” […]

Trekkies might rejoice at the news that NASA has recently decided to fund a research group employed to study how tractor beam technology might become applicable in space exploration missions. The agency has awarded a $100,000 initial grant to a team of reserachers who will study  three experimental techniques involving capturing small-particle samples with lasers. […]

Yesterday NASA tested a 18,000 pound mock-up of the ambitious Orion spacecraft in a water basin, to simulate how it would handle a Pacific Ocean landing in moderate sea conditions. The spacecraft is slated for space exploration programs and is capable of carrying four astronauts for as much as 21 days. The scientist at NASA’s […]

It sounds like something pinned off a SciFi novel, but it seems like new developments in space exploration technology might make an Earth to Mars journey last as less as 39 days. The distance between Mars and Earth varies because of the different Sun revolution periods (365.25 days for Earth, and 686 days for Mars), […]

Private company SpaceX has successfully delivered its first payload into orbit. It was the second successful launch for the company, which aims to reduce the cost of reaching orbit by a factor of ten. The launch took place Monday from Omelek in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. The two-stage […]

Mike Massimino hit the news in May as the first to “Tweet” in space. He began “tweeting” under the name “Astro Mike” while training for the STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Soon nearly 250,000 people were following his Twitter feed. The reality is that Massimino probably wasn’t really “tweeting” at all, at […]

Stormy weather conditions may delay the launch of space shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled for liftoff on Saturday, July 11. This comes on the heels of two delays last month caused by a hydrogen gas leak. A similar problem delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery in March. The 16-day mission will feature a number of  […]