The competition heats up: India’s government has okayed the launch of an unmanned probe to Mars.
An evening pause: What to do when you don’t have matches and all that is left is the nearest Ikea store.
More signs that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to enter interstellar space.
For the last seven years, Voyager 1 has been exploring the outer layer of the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. In one day, on July 28, data from Voyager 1’s cosmic ray instrument showed the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system jumped by five percent. During the last half of that same day, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels.
A third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction. Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space. A preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month.
Based on this report, expect scientists to announce that Voyager 1 has left the solar system sometime before the end of the year.
Launching a beer can into space. With video! More here.
Curiosity’s journey and upcoming landing, a summary.
It’s official: Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are the winners of NASA’s commercial crew contracts.
Boeing will receive $460 million, SpaceX $440 million, and Sierra Nevada $212.5. All are planning to launch by 2015.
Alan Boyle at NBC tonight reports that Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada are the winning companies in the competition to provide human ferrying services to ISS, to be announced officially by NASA tomorrow.
The report does not provide dollar numbers. This Wall Street Journal story says that Boeing and SpaceX will be the prime contractors, which suggests that Sierra Nevada will be getting a smaller award.
A new report predicts that the demand for suborbital spaceflight, both manned and unmanned, will likely rise by one third in the next ten years.
You can download the report here [pdf].
The report admits there are many unknowns, and that this prediction could be way off, in either direction.
The Russians have successfully docked their Progress freighter to ISS, using a fast route that took only 6 hours.
The rumors are now official: NASA will announce the winners of the commercial crew contracts on Friday.
Getting to ISS faster: a Progress freighter, launched today, is testing a new rendezvous route that takes only 6 hours to reach the station instead of the normal 48.
The disappearance of the old-fashioned chemistry set.
Here’s what it used to be like, when we lived in a free society:
By the 1920s and 30s children had access to substances which would raise eyebrows in today’s more safety-conscious times. There were toxic ingredients in pesticides, as well as chemicals now used in bombs or considered likely to increase the risk of cancer. And most parents will not need to be told of the dangers of the sodium cyanide found in the interwar kits or the uranium dust present in the “nuclear” kits of the 1950s.
The decision on NASA’s manned commercial crew contracts will be made this week, according to new rumors.
Back to the Moon: China has announced plans to land an unmanned probe on the Moon next year, the first such planned landing since the 1970s.
The Roman Colosseum has been found to be leaning about sixteen inches to the south.
Success: The Russians today successfully redocked their unmanned Progress freighter to ISS, using a new docking system.
Comeback: The Marines have put in an order for 12,000 M1911 pistols, the iconic 45 caliber pistol designed by John Browning more than a 100 years ago and used by the American military for most of the first half of the 20th century.
July 28 has now been set for the next docking attempt by a Progress freighter to ISS to test Russia’s new docking system.
The U.S. military is developing plans to recycle orbiting space junk into workable satellites.
A solar powered experimental airplane has successfully completed the first intercontinental roundtrip between Europe and Africa.
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner has successfully completed an 18 mile dive in preparation for a record 23 mile dive next month.
Bad news: One of Kepler’s four reaction wheels — used to orient the space telescope — has failed.
Kepler only needs three wheels to function – one to control the probe’s motion along each axis – and the probe resumed its observations on 20 July. “Kepler is functioning very well on three reaction wheels,” says mission manager Roger Hunter of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. If the glitch can’t be fixed, though, Kepler will be left without a backup wheel. “This is reducing the odds of making the mission go as long as we can,” says Kepler chief scientist William Borucki of NASA Ames, who doubts that Kepler could point accurately enough to look for transiting planets if reduced to two reaction wheels. “It was a disappointing surprise to find this wheel stopped so early.”
Good news: Mars Odyssey has successfully adjusted its orbit so as to provide up-to-the-minute communications when Curiosity lands on August 5.
A test redocking of a new automatic docking system on a Russian Progress freighter was aborted last night when the system did not work as planned.
They will probably try again on the weekend, after a Japanese cargo craft is berthed with the station.
NASA successfully tested a new inflatable heat shield today in a suborbital flight at Wallops Island..
Ten hotels made of weird things.
Oy. A new study has found strong evidence that compact fluorescent bulbs can harm the skin.
The oldest known color videotape recording: President Eisenhower in 1958.
