Contents Pages by Subject

Space Travel and Exploration

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NASA (thanks to Raw Story)

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

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Christian Science Monitor

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

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Tariq Malik for Space.com

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

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Space.com

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.

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Space.com

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

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National Space Society

"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.

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Associated Press

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

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Reuters

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

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Associated Press

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.

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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 (

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Space.com

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

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Space.com

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.

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Reuters

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

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Space.com

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

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The Independent

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

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Associated Press

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

JonesPlantation