Space

First space tourist plans to make trip to Mars in 2018

Earth's first space tourist won't be outdone by a few fancy NASA rovers with their cutesy names, sky cranes, and whatnot. So like the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, make the unprecedented 500-day round-trip journey to Mars to join 'em.

That's the insanely ambitious plan that Dennis Tito, who was the first private space traveler a little less than 12 years ago, will announce in more detail next week.

A release from Tito's newly formed Inspiration Mars Foundation teases "plans to take advantage of a unique window of opportunity to launch an historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days, starting in January 2018."… Read more

In major milestone, Curiosity's drill delivers first sample

The Curiosity rover's powerful impact drill has successfully collected its first subsurface sample, about a tablespoon of powdered rock that will be fed into the spacecraft's on-board laboratory instruments for detailed chemical analysis, project officials said Wednesday.

The drill is the last major system on the rover to be tested since landing in Gale Crater last August and the successful collection of subsurface material marks a major milestone in Curiosity's quest to find signs of past or present habitability.

"Curiosity's first drill hole at the John Klein site is a historic moment for the MSL (… Read more

Higgs Boson calculations add up to new Armageddon scenario

Anyone who thinks the end is nigh with a giant asteroid colliding into Earth may have a new apocalypse scenario to worry about.

It all boils down to the Higgs Boson particle, aka the "God particle."

Calculations that came with the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson last July also show that the particle's mass qualities could spell out the end of the universe said Fermilab theoretical physicist Joseph Lykken yesterday, according to NBC's Cosmic Log.

However, doomsdayers don't need to fret too much, the scientist also said that the likelihood of such a demise … Read more

Stunning mosaic delves deep into spiral galaxy (picture)

As part of an experiment in stunning mosaics and data visualization, astrophotographer Robert Gendler used scientific data from the Hubble Legacy Archive and combined it with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106.

Years of observations in WFC3 (which offers a unique combination of high sensitivity and wide spectral coverage), Hubble's primary camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (which offers three independent, high-resolution channels covering the ultraviolet to the near-infrared regions of the spectrum), and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 have given scientists varied views and detailed pieces of … Read more

Russian meteorite fragments pop up for sale online

Capitalism is certainly alive and well in today's Russia, as demonstrated by the growing number of attempts to cash in on the recent and much-recorded (thanks to the help of ubiquitous Russian dashboard cams) meteor strike in Siberia.

The meteor that broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk while also producing a window-shattering sonic boom and momentarily outshining the sun has become a cash cow for many opportunistic folks now offering up purported fragments of the space stone on eBay and elsewhere online.… Read more

Space station loses touch with Earth after glitch

The International Space Station (ISS) lost ground communications capabilities for around three hours this morning during a software upgrade, according to NASA.

As flight controllers on the ground in Houston were updating flight computers, the data relay systems malfunctioned, cutting off all communications with the ground. The Communication and Tracking System provides communications between the crew and Mission Control via Ku-band, S-band, and UHF frequencies.

During the upgrade, an anomaly resulted in the primary computer that controls critical station functions defaulting to a backup computer, but the system was not allowing the station to communicate with NASA's Tracking and … Read more

Map shows every meteorite impact since 2,300 B.C.

Want to find out where every meteorite recorded since 2,300 B.C. has fallen on Earth? A new map will help you out.

Javier de la Torre, co-founder of software companies Vizzuality and CartoDB, has posted a heat map showing where the meteorites have fallen over the last several thousand years. According to The Verge, which first reported on the map and spoke with de la Torre, 34,513 individual impact points are recorded on the map.

De la Torre claims that it took him only 30 minutes to record the impacts. He used OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced platform, for the map, and then input impact sites from data collected by the Meteorological Society.… Read more

Odds of dying from an asteroid strike: 1 in 74,817,414

It was a busy day for planet Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 45-meter wide space rock, sped past the Earth a mere 17,100 miles overhead. In the Ural mountains of Russia, a 15-meter wide, 7,000 metric ton asteroid hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a 300-kiloton shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people and shattered 1 million square feet of glass.

What are the odds that an asteroid impact will destroy your being in a given year? Slim -- 1 in 74,817,414, according to data compiled by The Economist. For comparison, the odds of … Read more

Congress to hold hearings about killer asteroids

Nothing like news of an asteroid suddenly slamming into western Siberia to arouse the folks in Washington from their preoccupation with political blood sport. So it is that the Science, Space, and Technology Committee now plans to hold a hearing soon "to examine ways to better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth."

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) alluded to the meteor that exploded in the sky above Russia early this morning. More than 900 injuries, mostly from shattered glass, were reported in the city of Chelyabinsk, about 950 miles east of Moscow. In … Read more