NASA released the particulars of its FY 2015 budget request yesterday, and the 713 page document revealed some disappointing news on two programs with long term implications. The first issue is the very tenuous support for a new outer planets mission to Jupiter’s enigmatic moon, Europa. Probably second only to Mars in terms of the […]
Really, Really Big Credit: ESO Another observation from the European Southern Observatory revealing just how strange, and magnificent, the depths of space can be. ESO Top News: ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer has revealed the largest yellow star — and one of the ten largest stars found so far. This hypergiant has been found to […]
Although they are not going up on the next flight, a GenCorp press release details the plan for qualifying and installing entirely new batteries for the International Space Station. As the largest solar power platform in orbit, generating up to 90 kilowatts of power, the International Space Station itself is a living laboratory for testing […]
From NASA: Expedition 38 Lands In Kazakhstan Completing Mission Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov and Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy landed in Kazakhstan at 11:24 p.m. EDT. They landed inside the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft ending their mission after five-and-a-half months aboard the International Space Station. The trio undocked from the Poisk module […]
1980’s classic PBS series COSMOS rebooted across Fox networks Sunday evening. Beginning with an introduction by President Obama, and the voice of the late Carl Sagan himself delivering the opening lines from the original episode “the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be,” a new generation has the opportunity to […]
It’s beginning to become difficult to keep track of all the existing or proposed IPhone devices which the media compares to Star Trek’s iconic tri-corders. Now you can add Wello to the list, a basic medical scanner built into an IPhone case, coming soon for Android phones as well.
Several items regarding solar power. First a press release from Chinese solar company Trina Solar, which working with the Australian National University has developed solar cells with conversion efficiencies above 24%. The current average global average is around 15%. Next the Guardian takes a look at a promising crystal structure called perovskites, and how they […]
NASA Press Release: An asteroid about 25 feet (8 meters) across will safely pass Earth at about 1:21 p.m. PST (4:21 p.m. EST) today, March 6, approaching us six times closer than the moon. This distance, though not unusual, is closer than the Earth flyby of a larger asteroid on Wednesday afternoon, March 5. This […]
An Aviation Week blog interview with Elon Musk sheds a little more light on the Falcon 9’s commercial performance and how it will affected by first stage re-usability. From the interview: “Where I basically see this netting out is Falcon 9 will do satellites up to roughly 3.5 tonnes, with full reusability of the boost […]
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