Category: Space
British space exploration lives on! MoonLITE probe heading Moon-wards in 2012
Only about 35 years after the last American stood on the Moon, Britain is going back – with a decidedly non-thrilling unmanned probe.
Designed by mainly British scientists – with complicated navigational bits provided by NASA – the £100m MoonLITE probe will hopefully be on its way by 2012…
Spaceport America – Virgin Galactic's hangar and terminal really will exist
And yes, they’re sticking with the wildly optimistic name Virgin Galactic.
The spaceport, based in New Mexico, is the streamlined doughnut thing there in the photo…
The sexy space suit
Designer Dava Newman is quite brave. She’s stuck loads of photos of herself on the internet, wearing a tight space suit she made herself.
Only this isn’t Star Trek cosplay. She’s not being the Deanna Troi to our Commander Riker.
Look for 'weird' extraterrestrial life on Titan, say scientists
Don’t just focus on Earth-style life forms when looking for extraterrestrial beings, says the U.S. National Research Council, in a statement of the breathtakingly (be it oxygen or methane) obvious. “Advances throughout the last decade in biology and biochemistry show that the basic requirements for life might not be as concrete as we thought,” said committee chair John Baross, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle. “The search so far has focused on Earth-like life because that’s all we know, but life that may have originated elsewhere could be unrecognizable compared with life here.” Goodness! One might think scientists were creatures of closed and narrow focus, in need of reminder that not everything that looks like a fork should go in your mouth! Developing (over the next thousand years). [GT]
Probe Titan for ‘weird’ life, U.S. scientists recommend
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Orbital Outfitters Spacedivers jump from orbit
Russian ‘Bigelow’ inflatable spaceship spreads its wings
Pretend Martians wanted: must be short, non-smoker
Orbital Outfitters Spacedivers jump from orbit
As if jumping from a plane wasn’t heart-stopping enough, a plan is afoot, via a company called Orbital Outfitters, to create “life jackets” that could allow astronauts to enter Earth atmosphere without a vehicle and without being torn apart. The plan is for space diving to be used both for sport and as an emergency escape for astronauts in low Earth orbit. Orbital Outfitters plan to make an initial jump of 120,000 feet in 2009. [GT]
High Dive (viaSciFi Tech)
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Russian 'Bigelow' inflatable spaceship spreads its wings
Only 4.4 metres long and 1.9 metres across at launch, the Russian Genesis II spaceship is now expanded to 11.5 cubic meters of usable volume. While that still sounds (and is) small, the ship is designed as a 1/3 scale proof-of-concept so that in the future we can look more to ships that start out small and grow with age. Part of how Genesis II was funded was with the “Fly your Stuff” campaign where the public could pay to send their belongings into space. It’ll also literally be running a space bingo game. Cutting edge! [GT]
Inflatable spacecraft blossoms in orbit
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Spaceframe Sculpture Kit for your kids, yeah, that’s it
Space banana to orbit Texas
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Pretend Martians wanted: must be short, non-smoker
Are you interested in experiencing isolation, confinement, close quarters, lack of privacy, high workload, repetitive food, and limited communication with the outside world? Are you highly motivated, a non-smoker, not in jail, shorter than 185cm, physically and psychologically fit, and a fluent speaker of English or Russian (preferably both)? The Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow seeks volunteers to pretend they are living on Mars for 520 days, on behalf of the European Space Agency. It includes 250 days to ‘reach Mars’, 30 days ‘on Mars’ and 240 days to ‘return to Earth’. Compensation is “in line with international standards for participation in clinical studies.” Serious inquiries only. [GT]
Volunteers wanted for trip to ‘Mars’
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Baby monitor picks up video from NASA
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Baby monitor picks up video from NASA
An elementary school science teacher from Palatine, Ill. is picking up something odd on her baby monitor. Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby. NASA has said that the feed is not coming from the shuttle directly, so it is possible the monitor is picking up the signal from somewhere. Maybe it’s her teeth. [GT]
Baby monitor picks up video from NASA [via Boing Boing]
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Astronaut Glove Competition rewards low-cost cleverness
Peter Homer won $200,000 in the Astronaut Glove Competition, despite knowing nothing about glove-making at the start of the two-day competition. NASA wanted a glove that was lighter-weight, stronger and more durable than the one in current use, as…
New supernova from star 150 times the size of the sun
Supernovae usually occur when a star runs out of energy and collapses in on itself, but scientists have just spotted a monstrous star explosion that instead blasted all its energy outward. The result has lasted over 70 days, with…
