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space

NASA Heads Back to mars

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Mars - NASA

NASA’s newest Mars car will touch down on the Red Planet less than 100 days from now. The life-hunting Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30, is scheduled to land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on the afternoon of Feb. 18, 2021 — just 97 days from Friday (Nov. 13). The home stretch will be busy for the car-size robot’s handlers. “While we call the six-and-a-half-month trip from Earth to Mars ‘cruise, I assure you there is not much croquet going on at the lido deck,” mission project manager John McNamee, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory … Read more

What Happens After the Sun Dies?

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supernova - pixabay

Our sun’s death is a long way off — about 4.5 billion years, give or take — but someday it’s going to happen, and what then for our solar system? The trouble begins before the death proper: The first thing we have to contend with is the elderly sun itself. As the fusion of hydrogen continues inside the sun, the result of that reaction — helium — builds up in the core. With all the waste product hanging around, it gets harder for the sun to do its fusion dance. But the inward crushing weight of the sun’s atmosphere doesn’t … Read more

Scientists Find Organic Compounds on Fresh Meteorite

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meteorite

A meteorite that landed on a frozen lake in 2018 contains thousands of organic compounds that formed billions of years ago and could hold clues about the origins of life on Earth. The meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 16, 2018, after a very long journey through the freezing vacuum of space, lighting up skies over Ontario, Canada, and the midwestern United States. Weather radar tracked the flaming space rock’s descent and breakup, helping meteorite hunters to quickly locate fallen fragments on Strawberry Lake in Hamburg, Michigan. An international team of researchers then examined a walnut-size piece of the meteorite … Read more

The Elysium Effect

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Elysium

In the 2013 science fiction film “Elysium” starring Matt Damon, Earth’s wealthiest 0.01% move to the ultimate gated community, a luxurious orbiting space colony, leaving a poverty-stricken humanity to fend for themselves on a ravaged planet. Interestingly, it is indeed some of today’s 0.1% who are leading the way into space to build communities beyond Earth. However, quite the opposite of the movie, their goals are of the highest order, from democratizing access to space by lowering costs, to creating new products and ideas, to helping save the planet and opening space to future generations. Yet, given the effects of … Read more

SPACE: Water on the Moon

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moon - pixabay

For the first time ever, scientists have identified water on the moon’s sunlit surface. They also found that water is more common on the moon than previously thought, with pockets of ice hiding in shadowy regions of “eternal darkness,” some as small as a penny, new studies reveal. Scientists have been finding signs of water on the moon since 2009 and, in 2018, confirmed the presence of water ice on the lunar surface. Now, researchers in two new studies have detected water at one of the largest crater formations on a sunlit surface on the moon and also found that … Read more

We May Already Have Discovered Planets More Hospitable to Life Than Earth

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Habitable Planet? - NASA

At least two dozen planets outside the solar system might be better for life than Earth. These planets are just a little older, a little wetter, a little warmer and a little larger than Earth is, researchers wrote Sept. 18 in the journal Astrobiology. All of these factors could mean that some of these planets are the best places to search for extraterrestrial life. “We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life. However, we have to be careful to not get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets … Read more

Building a Better Wormhole

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Wormhole - Pixabay

Wormholes, or tunnels in the fabric of space-time, are ferociously unstable. As soon as even a single photon slips down the tunnel, the wormhole closes in a flash.  But what if the problem was that our imagined wormholes weren’t quite weird enough?  A new study suggests that the secret to a stable wormhole is making them funny looking. By shaping the wormhole so that it’s not a perfect sphere, we might be able to hold that tunnel open for long enough to travel through. The only catch is that said wormhole would have to be incomprehensibly tiny. Down the hatch Wormholes, … Read more

SPACE: Are They Watching Us?

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alien - pixabay

There are about 1,000 star systems where aliens, if they existed, could be watching us from afar, new research suggests. Those 1,004 star systems are in a direct line of sight to our planet, and close enough to us that they could not only detect planet Earth, but also chemical traces of Earthly life.  Over the course of the last decade, astronomers have found exoplanets orbiting distant stars using a simple formula: Keep an eye on a star and wait for it to suddenly dim. That dimming is a sign of a planet passing between the star and the telescope. … Read more

SPACE: NASA Just Snagged a Bit of Asteroid Rock to Bring Home (Hopefully)

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OSIRIS-REx at Bennu - NASA

For the first time ever, a NASA probe has performed a sample-snagging operation on an asteroid in deep space. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spiraled down to the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 20) to grab material that mission team members hope harbors clues about the solar system’s early days and the rise of life on Earth. “We did it!” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said during a webcast that provided updates about the maneuver. “We tagged the surface of the asteroid, and it’s up to Bennu now to see how the … Read more

SPACE: SpaceX Could Launch Unmanned Mission to Mars in 2024

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SpaceX Starship

SpaceX is almost ready to start building a permanent human settlement on Mars with its massive Starship rocket. The private spaceflight company is on track to launch its first uncrewed mission to Mars in as little as four years from now, SpaceX’s founder and CEO Elon Musk said Friday (Oct. 16) at the International Mars Society Convention. “I think we have a fighting chance of making that second Mars transfer window,” Musk said in a discussion with Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin. You can watch a replay of the talk here. That window Musk referred to is a launch opportunity … Read more