Category: Space

September 23, 2016The evolution of the Milky Way is a fascinating one for astronomers. Governed by the basic laws of gravity, work in simulating the conditions that led to our present spiral disk have indicated that there should be thousands of dwarf galaxies orbiting our own - but there aren& 39;t. Now, astronomers out of Caltech have cracked the problem.

September 14, 2016Tiny satellites, not much bigger than a Rubik& 39;s Cube, are routinely sent into space to perform a range of research and maintenance tasks. This unique propulsion system is set to send them further than ever before. Image source: Wikimedia CubeSats: Tiny Modular Research VesselsNASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) allows researchers and educational institutions to conduct space research.

October 11, 2016A year on Mars takes 687 Earth days, almost two full years on Earth. In this time, NASA& 39;s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission made some key discoveries about our fascinating red neighbor. Image source: University of Colorado/Lockheed Martin October 3 marked the first Martian anniversary of the MAVEN mission, a collaboration between the University of Colorado and NASA.

January 09, 2017The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch has been delayed by five days, to 14th of January, due to bad weather.SpaceX& 39;s rocket was scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday morning, January 9th, at 10:22. Image Source: Victorleon960/Pixabay Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, announced with a tweet on Sunday:“Launch moving due to high winds and rains at Vandenberg.

January 15, 2017On Saturday morning, 14 January 2017, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9, a two-stage rocket, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Image Source: SpaceX Approximately 8 minutes later, the Falcon 9& 39;s first-stage booster came flying back down from the edge of space. The booster landed safely on SpaceX& 39;s company’s drone ship in the Pacific Ocean named ‘Just Read The Instructions’.

January 17, 2017Moon Express has finally raised sufficient funds and will soon be embarking on its first mission to the Moon. It is the first private company to receive permission from the U.S. government to travel to the Moon. Image Source: Pixabay Moon Express is a California-based start-up company.

India recently launched a record-breaking rocket with a massive payload containing 104satellites.India& 39;s space agency is lighting up the skies again with another record-breaking rocket. On its thirty-ninth flight, the PSLV-C37 carried 103 nano-satellites into space along with the much larger Cartosat-2 series satellite.

February 19, 2017SpaceX& 39;s Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off on Sunday following an unsuccessful attempt on Saturday. This launch marks a historic note, sending supplies to the ISS from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), the same complex that launched the Apollo missions landing man on the moon. Image Source: NASA via Twitter Saturday& 39;s unsuccessful launch was scrubbed due to a vector control failure just 13 seconds before liftoff.

By Shelby RogersMarch 05, 2017New planets lead to fascinating new potentials for further discovery. They also lead to some of the best opportunities for fresh names. In the original live stream Q&A with NASA scientists, someone even asked via Twitter what the new names would be. One of the researchers chuckled before explaining that naming every new discovery with an appropriate title would take a very long time.

March 15, 2017Meet PUFFER, NASA& 39;s adorable little robot. PUFFER was designed to explore parts of space like Mars and Europa. He is an origami-inspired robot which NASA created to provide future missions with simple, low-cost access to extreme terrains. PUFFER& 39;s name stands for Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robots.

By Kathleen VillaluzMarch 27, 2017A 3D map of our galaxy’s space dust was created by scientists in the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). One of the goals of this 3D space map is to carefully plot each individual dust that exists in our galaxy in order to clear up the deep space view and measure the accelerating expansion rate of the universe.

By Shelby RogersMarch 27, 2017Florida man Stephen Marr just wanted to take an enjoyable helicopter ride with his girlfriend. The couple paid $40 for a nice six-minute aerial tour. Yet the 34-year-old pizza delivery guy got so much more.& 34;As we were making the approach to land, I had the drone ship on my side and was able to get a clear photo of some new equipment on board that, as an avid SpaceX fan, I did not recognize,& 34; Marr said.

The world& 39;s oldest functioning planetarium dates back to the 18th-century. The planetarium was put together by a wool carder, between 1774 and 1781. It is located in the living room of a sweet, two-story Friesian canal-side house in the city of Franeker, Netherlands. Image Source: James Stringer via Flickr Destruction of Planet EarthA small book was published in 1774 which created panic among the nations.

After thirteen years of surveying Saturn, NASA& 39;s Cassini spacecraft approaches its final ventures around the planet. The Cassini mission is one of the most scientifically rich voyages that has been conducted in our solar system and for the spacecraft& 39;s grand finale, it will dazzlingly plunge into Saturn& 39;s atmosphere where it will crash and become a part of the planet.

Orbiting above the Earth in April of 1967, Russian Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov sat in the Russian-made Soyuz 1 space capsule, sure that he would be dying that day.Fuel was low, construction of the craft was sub-par, and little did he know, the parachutes on his landing craft were faulty.Life and Career of Vladimir KomarovVladimir Komarov was a Soviet test pilot in the 1960s, one of the first few people to be selected for the ambitious space program racing the US to the moon.