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Boeing’s Private Space Taxi to Take Flight by 2016

April 27, 2012 by ·

With NASA’s space shuttle fleet now permanently grounded, aerospace giant Boeing is aiming to fly astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a new private spaceship as early as 2015 or 2016, company officials say.

Boeing’s CST-100 capsule (short for Commercial Space Transportation-100) is being designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and other destinations in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft will initially launch from Florida atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, but the company is not ruling out other booster options in the future, officials have said.

The capsule is being designed as part of a NASA program that supports the development of a new fleet of commercially built spaceships to fill the gap made by the retirement of the shuttle program. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Science, Space Programme, Technologies ·

Russia’s Mars Probe Will Crash To Earth In January

December 16, 2011 by ·

A Russian spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars and stuck in Earth’s orbit will come crashing back next month, but its toxic fuel and radioactive material on board will pose no danger of contamination, the Russian space agency said Friday.

Between 20 and 30 fragments of the probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the fiery plunge and shower the Earth’s surface, Roscosmos warned in a statement.

The agency said the unmanned Phobos-Ground spacecraft will plummet to Earth between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19, and the rough area of where the fragments could fall could only be calculated a few days ahead of its plunge. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Space Programme, Technologies ·

Large Parts Of Mars ‘Habitable’

December 14, 2011 by ·

Planetary scientists have claimed “large regions” of Mars are habitable for terrestrial life.

An international team, led by the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the distant planet was liveable for Earth-like organisms.

While just one per cent of Earth’s volume — from core to upper atmosphere — was occupied by life, the scientists said their world-first modelling showed three per cent of Mars was habitable, though most of it was underground. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Humanities, Solar System, Space Programme ·

Scientists Discover Earth’s ‘Twin’ Planet

December 7, 2011 by ·

Scientists say they have found the most Earth-like planet ever discovered – circling a star 600 light years away.

It is among 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system – and the smallest and the best-positioned to have liquid water on its surface.

Kepler-22b could prove a key to the ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth.

San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, of Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope which made the discovery, said: “We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Solar System, Space Programme ·

‘Super Earth’ Exists Outside Solar System

December 6, 2011 by ·

In another step toward finding Earth-like planets that may hold life, Nasa said today that the Kepler space telescope has confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system.

French astronomers earlier this year confirmed the first rocky exoplanet to meet key requirements for sustaining life. But Kepler-22b, initially glimpsed in 2009, is the first the US space agency has been able to confirm.

Confirmation means that astronomers have seen it crossing in front of its star three times. But it doesn’t mean that astronomers know whether life actually exists there, simply that the conditions are right.

Such planets have the right distance from their star to support water, plus a suitable temperature and atmosphere to support life. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Solar System, Space Programme ·

Cave Astronauts Explore Deep Inside Earth to Simulate Spaceflight

November 4, 2011 by ·

On Friday (Nov. 4), six volunteer astronauts will “return” to Earth from a mock mission to Mars, after spending 18 months isolated from the world in a special facility in Moscow.

But the Mars500 crewmembers are not the only ones who have faced extreme conditions in simulating a real space mission. An international team of five astronauts recently completed a spaceflight training mission in Europe that required them to live and work in a dark and isolated cave for nearly a week.

The September training mission was organized by the European Space Agency to simulate aspects of a real space exploration mission. The astronauts were stationed deep within a complex cave system on the Italian island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Outer Space, Space Programme ·

Scientist: Satellite Must Have Crashed Into Asia

October 24, 2011 by ·

A defunct German research satellite crashed into the Earth somewhere in Southeast Asia on Sunday, a U.S. scientist said — but no one is still quite sure where.

Most parts of the minivan-sized ROSAT research satellite were expected to burn up as they hit the atmosphere at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph), but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could have crashed, the German Aerospace Center said.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the satellite appears to have gone down over Southeast Asia. He said two Chinese cities with millions of inhabitants each, Chongqing and Chengdu, had been in the satellite’s projected path during its re-entry time. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Science, Solar System, Space Programme ·