Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will
The planet Venus moves to astronomy's center stage this week with the arrival of the European Space Agency's spacecraft. The Venus Express orbiter is slated to reach Earth's neighbor early Tuesday morning. Roughly 3 weeks later, it will r
The Mars rover Spirit, hampered by a broken wheel, has failed to reach its destination and will spend the Martian winter at an alternate site. The solar-powered Spirit was rolling toward the north-facing side of McCool Hill last month to recharge on
Readying the unpiloted X-37 vehicle for a drop test high above the desert. Taking the craft to altitude for release will be the White Knight mothership, designed and operated by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California.
It was the White Knight that
Most scientists agree that core accretion is how terrestrial planets such as Earth and Mars were created, but the model can't convincingly explain how gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn came to be. One major problem is that developing gas
Musk said the fire began about 25 seconds after liftoff and cut into the Falcon 1 rocket’s first stage helium pneumatic system used to pressurize the booster’s fuel tanks. Once that pressure dropped, the Falcon 1 rocket’s Merlin engine shut down abou
Researchers studying the meteorite that originated from Mars found a series of microscopic tunnels within the object that mimic the size, shape and distribution to tracks left on Earth rocks by the feeding frenzy of bacteria.
The Falcon 1 rocket began its journey to orbit, but regrettably failed about one minute into launch during the first stage burn. Details are unknown. Designed from the ground up by SpaceX, Falcon 1 is a two stage rocket powered by liquid oxygen and p
Lost chemical canisters and some suspect handrails will prevent astronauts on the International Space Station from doing any spacewalking in the near future.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is in great shape after its arrival at the planet on March 10. Now being readied to produce its first images of Mars this week. University of Arizona's super-powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment camer
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have developed a tiny light detector that could one day boost interplanetary communications to broadband speeds. The work could permit the transmission of color video between astronauts and sa
"Is the surface of a planet the best place for an expanding technological civilization?" As long as we live in a world where limited resources must be allocated among a growing population, we are ultimately doomed.
1 of the 6 wheels on the Mars rover Spirit has stopped working and the solar-powered robot must propel itself up a slope to catch enough sunshine to keep operating, NASA said. "It is not drawing any current at all," said a rover engineerin
NASA's Spirit Mars rover has wrapped up exploration of a baffling feature called "Home Plate" but now faces the onset of martian winter while dealing with dropping power levels and fighting a balky right front wheel. Drive to safe winte
Space shuttle Discovery's robotic arm was set to return to its Canadian manufacturer for repairs on Friday after the latest in a spate of accidents that prompted a stern call for caution at the
Kennedy Space Center.
NASA put off its next space shuttle mission until July at the earliest to replace fuel sensors in the shuttle's external fuel tank that could give faulty readings. Could further delay the orbital construction of the International Space Station, w
How did materials formed by fire end up on the outermost reaches of the solar system, where temperatures are the coldest? The materials were contained in comet dust samples captured and returned to Earth.
The potential discovery of water on one of Saturn's moons would add a new environment in the solar system where life could exist. The probe may have found evidence of liquid water that erupts like geysers.
• NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH NEWS RELE
The next sunspot cycle will be 30-50% stronger than the last one and begin as much as a year late, according to a breakthrough forecast using a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (
ZeroG will send small personal items into space starting at $49. The company's first launch will take place on May 20th from the new Southwest Regional Spaceport in New Mexico.
Scaled Composites in Mojave, California is in the deep design stage of a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft. They are looking to find the right talent to build the commercial spaceships for the new industry of private space
During the next couple of weeks skywatchers will be turning their attention to a newly discovered comet that has just swept past the Sun and will soon cruise past Earth on its way back out toward the depths of the outer solar system.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is headed into a perilous phase after a 7-month journey from Earth, aiming to start looping around the Red Planet on March 10. Over the next 6 months, the spacecraft will use aerobraking and the drag of the mart
The X Prize Foundation is seeking public comment on draft rules for a lunar lander contest. “Our goals are completely parallel,” Murphy said of the foundation and NASA. “We want NASA to make things possible, and the space industry want to make things
The blast seemed a lot like a gamma-ray burst, the most distant and powerful type of explosion known to astronomers. But the explosion was about 25 times closer and lasted 100 times longer than a typical gamma-ray burst.
Plans for a spaceport on Singapore that will blast tourist flights into space by 2009 have been announced by a US company which hopes to train amateur astronauts in four days—for $100.000 a head. The same company, Space Adventures, announced plans to
Scotty will be blasted into space—not beamed up—and Gordo is returning for his third flight. The spacecraft will hold the ashes of 185 others, including a telephone technician, a nurse and a college student. Launch a rocket next month with mementoes
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