Source: NASA, ESA For a students of ancient Egyptian religion (and who isn’t), Apophis is the Greek name give to the evil god Apep, often represented as a serpent. As the mortal enemy of Ra, the sun god and bringer of light, Apep battled to bring darkness and chaos to the world. To later generations of course, and fans of […]
Source: JPL One of the most promising potential locations for eventual human settlement in the outer solar system is Saturn’s fascinating moon, Titan. Bigger than innermost planet Mercury, half again as large as our own Moon, and second only to Ganymede in total size, Titan possesses a thick nitrogen atmosphere, which blankets a bizarre frigid landscape dominated by the hydrocarbons methane and ethane. […]
Source: space.com The Golden Spike Company announced last week that it has selected Northrop Grumman to conduct a design trade for the lunar lander which would be required to bring about its vision of privately conducted manned trips to the Moon. The construction of the actual lander would come after a competition in which the defense giant might not necessarily be the […]
Source: JPL News Release Astronomers are rapidly closing in on the rather intriguing conclusion that there is on average at least one planet for every star in the Milky Way Galaxy and probably a lot more than that. The numbers are straighforward, but staggering. Approximately 100 billion stars give or take, yields a planetary count in the hundreds […]
In one of its final acts the 1112th Congress passed the Space Exploration Sustainability Act, a bill originally introduced on December 4th by newly re-elected Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, and retiring Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. The primary purpose of the legislation was to secure space launch liability indemnification for another year, (the House wanted two years) and to […]
Innerspace.net is primarily focused on developments in the international launch industry and the quest for progressively more affordable space transportation. It also attempts to keep in focus some of the reasons achieving that goal benefits science and society as a whole; to better understand the astonishing wonders in our own solar system, and those far beyond, even if we have […]
NASA Glenn recently announced that it has passed the 43,000 hour mark of continuous operation of its NEXT (NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster) ion thruster. Although coverage focused on the long running duration, the more relevent statistic is that NEXT represents a significant advancement over the first generation NSTAR ion thruster which powered Deep Space 1, and is currently accelerating the DAWN mission towards an […]
As spaceship Earth embarks on another trip around the Sun, it’s an appropriate occasion to take a look ahead at the New Year and consider what developments might take place which could change the fundamental cost basis of reaching orbit. Suborbital Space: After seemingly endless delays, 2013 is poised to be the breakout year for the reusable suborbital launch industry. (but […]
Recent Comments