Another Soyuz upgrade in the works
Another Soyuz upgrade in the works.
Another Soyuz upgrade in the works.
Another Soyuz upgrade in the works.
Soyuz TMA-20 lands safely in Kazakhstan.
The United Kingdom’s Skylon spaceplane has passed a key European Space Agency review.
I’ve seen hundreds of these kinds of stories over the years. Skylon looks cool, and would be revolutionary if built. We shall see if it actually happens.
A hint at what today’s images of the station and shuttle, taken from the Soyuz capsule, will look like.
A paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint website has taken a close look at identifying the best nearby asteroids ideal for mounting a manned mission. The conclusion: our survey of such asteroids is very incomplete (only 65 known), and due to their location in Earthlike orbits they are very difficult to study.
Ultra-low delta-v NEOs are not readily found. Their closely Earth-like orbits mean that most of the time they are in the daytime sky, as seen from the Earth, and so are effectively undetectable. As they approach within <1AU of the Earth they start to lie near quadrature, and so come into the dawn or dusk sky on Earth. The strong scattered sunlight background makes optical surveys toward the dawn or dusk much less sensitive and, in practice, surveys do not look in these directions, preferring to observe where the sky is dark, within 45 degrees, and at most 60 degrees, of the anti-Sun, opposition, direction. As a consequence the lowest delta-v NEOs are undercounted by current surveys, and the factor by which they are undercounted is not yet known.
The paper proposes building a dedicated unmanned infrared mission and placing it in a Venus-like orbit where it would be better placed to see these difficult but important objects.
Images of Robert Bigelow’s ambitious private space station plans.
The departing Soyuz crew will do a photo-op fly around on Monday to photograph the completed station with a docked shuttle.
Spacesuit malfunction shortens spacewalk at ISS.
Liquified gas plant to be the biggest floating object ever built.
The next Moon mission, launching this summer.
Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest evidence of organized mining in the Americas.
Test drive a Peugeot and win a trip to space.
Seven damage sites, mostly small gouges and dings, have been found on the tiles on Endeavour’s belly.
“This is not cause for alarm, it’s not cause for any concern,” said [LeRoy Cain, chairman of NASA’s Mission Management Team]. “We know how to deal with these things in terms of how to assess them. We know that if we get to the point where we need some more data for our assessment, we have a plan for going and doing that.”
An evening pause: Video of the May 10 test flight of SpaceShipTwo. “Now we can come back from space.”
Endeavour has docked with ISS.
Video and images from the zero gravity beer test Plus some results!
Netflix now consumes 29.7 percent of the peak internet traffic in North America.
Private citizen has just donated $25 million for the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope.
This is how it used to be done all the time: All the early giant telescopes built in the United States before World War II were financed by individuals or private foundations, with no or little government investment.
The proposed green replacements for the banned 100 watt incandescent bulbs, LEDs, cost $50 each.
An evening pause: If all goes well, I will be watching a variation of this live from Florida tomorrow morning. The action really begins at the five minute mark. Also, this particular video gives you the best flavor of what it was like to see the launch live, rather than on film or video.
A review of India’s troubled GSLV rocket has put a hold on its next moon probe.
The solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse, made its maiden international flight on Friday.
Members of the world’s first mobility scooter display team, the Red Wheelies, are attempting to set a new world 24-hour distance record this weekend.
The countdown has begun for Monday’s shuttle launch.
If all goes well, I will be there to watch it (albeit from 11 miles away). Right now mission controllers estimate a 70% chance of liftoff, depending on the weather.
Another successful test flight of SpaceShipTwo took place on Tuesday. Via Clark Lindsey.