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. […]
NASA / JPL recently released Clouds, a new on-line “game” which is a part of the Milky Way Project , a science initiative which seeks to refine some of the vast quantity of observations made by the Spitzer Space telescope and ESA’s Hershel Space Observatory. One of the common emerging themes in space science is that the capacity to […]
Two weeks ago, at the European Space Agency Ministerial meeting in Naples, Italy, Germany and France advocated competing views over the future of the Ariane V launch vehicle, and in particular how to respond to pricing pressure from SpaceX. Now, according to an article in Space News, the chosen course of action is already showing cracks. The Ariane V, which holds a dominant position […]
The newest version of the venerable Russian Soyuz launch vehicle continued a successful launch campaign out of the Arianespace/European Space Agency’s equatorial launch facility in French Guiana Saturday evening. Carrying the multi-purpose French Pleiades 1B observation satellite which will serve military, governmental and commercial customers, the Soyuz-ST-A, which includes a Fregat upperstage, lifted off at 8:02 PM CST (11:02 PM local) Specially modified to withstand […]
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working with the European Space agency’s Herschel Space Observatory has announced the discovery of large concentrations of comets in two solar systems relatively close to our own. With both systems likely to contain rocky planets, the presence of so many water bearing comets, at a concentration 10 times greater than found in our own solar system, […]
Source: RIANOVSTI It would perhaps be more than a little overreach to describe the state of the Russian space industry as a “train wreck,” but news that a Proton rocket, scheduled to launch the Satmex-8 telecommunications satellite was damaged during rail transport last week and will be need to be replaced, does little to bolster confidence in the […]
Update: After being scrubbed Friday due to high upper level winds, the Ariane V is looking for better conditions today for a second launch attempt. Previous post: The European Ariane V launch vehicle is scheduled for liftoff from French Guiana during a launch window beginning at 3:05 PM CST. The dual manifested mission will boost two […]
Four days away from its fourth flight, and the first of 12 under NASA’s CRS program, the impact of changes in the launch industry being wrought by SpaceX and its Falcon 9 is being felt literally around the planet. In Europe, Russia and Japan, launch operators are grappling with how to address the fact that lower prices appear to be a fact of life. In […]
In what turned out to be a rather busy last Friday in September for European space, an Ariane V rocket completed its 51st consecutive successful launch at almost the same time the ESA built ATV-3 resupply ship departed the International Space Station following a six month stay. The ATV was actually scheduled to depart earlier in the week, but was […]
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