Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Continue reading
Aerospace giant Boeing has inked a deal to use an old space shuttle hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the headquarters to build and test the private company’s new spaceship designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Continue reading
This month we are expecting the flyby of Asteroid 2005 YU55. On November 8th, it will make a close approach to the Earth at 0.85 lunar distances. It has a diameter of about 400 meters so unfortunately it is too small to be visible to the naked eye. Continue reading
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the “Late Heavy Bombardment,” which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth. Continue reading
As the United States settles in for the long winter ahead in American space launch capabilities, after a summer that witnessed the end of the Shuttle program, two radically different visions for the future have emerged, put forward by two equally different entities. Continue reading
ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered an ozone layer high in the atmosphere of Venus. Comparing its properties with those of the equivalent layers on Earth and Mars will help astronomers refine their searches for life on other planets. Continue reading
This month we were expecting to see a close approach of the comet Elenin. Unfortunately, the comet has recently lost in brightness and it seems that it is breaking up. Even these news haven’t stopped all that doomsday nonsense in the blogosphere about this comet crashing into the Earth… Continue reading
The United States desperately needs a way to get its astronauts to space and back — and one solution could be taking NASA’s space shuttle fleet out of retirement, famed moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan told Congress today. Continue reading
A Russian-built Soyuz space capsule landed safely back on Earth late Thursday (Sept. 15), returning an American astronaut and two cosmonauts home after more than five months in space. The Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft touched down at about 9:59 a.m. Friday local time at their landing site on the steppes of Kazakhstan in central Asia. Continue reading
Move over Commander Data, there’s a real robot in space, now. The International Space Station got a new crewmember today, one made not of flesh and blood, but of gears and clockwork instead. Called Robonaut 2, the automaton astronaut was activated by human spaceflyers today. Continue reading