Space

On August 14, 2005, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Huygens probe landed by parachute on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. To commemorate the eighth anniversary of this historic event, NASA has released an animation that recreates that landing based on instrument readings taken by the unmanned probe during its final descent through the Titanian atmosphere.  Read More

The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is planning to launch an unmanned spacecraft to the Moon in 2015, a first step toward the ambitious long-term plan to establish a robotic base on the surface of our largest satellite. The spacecraft, called Luna-Glob ("Moon globe"), will be followed by two more orbiters and two rovers that will study the lunar soil locally and collect samples of rocks and dust, bringing them back to Earth for analysis.  Read More

When you’re trying to keep a rogue asteroid from hitting Earth, you’d better get it right the first time. With this in mind, the European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for new ideas to help develop a US-European asteroid deflection mission. With a target date of October, 2022, the purpose of the mission is to send a pair of spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid where one will impact it while the other observes the effect.  Read More

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is scheduled to carry out the first drilling ever conducted on the Red Planet. At a press conference, NASA officials said that the unmanned explorer would test its drill on a target rock within the next two weeks. The target selected is the “John Klein” area of Glen Crater where the rover will take rock samples as part of Curiosity’s two-year mission to find places on the Red Planet where life could have or still might exist.  Read More

The two Star franchises (Wars and Trek) and countless science fiction movies have given generations of armchair space travelers an idea of what to expect when looking out the window of a spaceship making the jump to light speed. But it appears these views are – if you’ll excuse the pun – a bit warped. Four students from the University of Leicester have used Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity to calculate what Han and Chewie would actually see as they made the jump to hyperspace.  Read More

NASA has announced that it has awarded a US$17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide the International Space Station with an inflatable module. Details of the award will be discussed by NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow at a press conference on January 16 at the Bigelow Aerospace facilities in North Las Vegas. However, based on previous talks, it’s likely that the module in question could be the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).  Read More

The White House has officially responded to a petition calling on the US government to "begin a construction of a Death Star by 2016." Though the news for proponents of space fascism wasn't good, Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, did respond in the spirit of the original petition…  Read More

A new study has led to the classification of NGC 6872 as the largest known spiral galaxy. The galaxy measures some 522,000 light-years across and resides 212 million light-years from earth. The stellar system exists in close proximity to the small disk galaxy IC 4970, which is thought to have recently collided with the larger system.  Read More

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a video transmitted by the GRAIL lunar orbiters during their final days. The dramatic footage was taken on December 14, 2012 as part of a final systems check before the twin spacecraft shut down their instruments in preparation for a controlled impact into a lunar mountain.  Read More