The science behind SpaceX’s ambitious plan to land a spacecraft on Mars

Only the space agencies of the Soviet Union, the US and the EU have landed anything on Mars. This week Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX said it would put its Dragon spacecraft on the red planet “as soon as 2018″—making it the first private company to go interplanetary.

It’s easy to get impatient with crackpot plans to head for the red planet. (I’m guilty of it, too.) But SpaceX is unique in combining its dreams of Mars with well-funded, hard-nosed engineers.

And as it turns out, the company’s long-running quest to build reusable rockets, with the aim of making it cheaper to launch satellites into Earth’s orbit, has had a stealthier goal too. SpaceX’s

China aims for 2018 landing on far side of the moon

A photograph taken on a giant screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing shows an animated image of the Chang'e-3 lunar probe landing onto the surface of the moon,

China aims to continue ramping up its space exploration efforts by landing the first lunar probe on the far side of the moon -- the hemisphere that faces away from Earth -- in 2018, the Xinhua news agency reports.
The far side of the moon has never been explored, making plans for the Chang'e-4 probe quite the milestone, said Liu Jizhong, chief to the country's State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense's lunar exploration center. China had previously set a goal of landing a probe there by the year 2020.

Destructive Extreme Turbulance in Galaxy W2246-0526 is devouring galatic rub

In a far-off galaxy, 12.4 billion light-years from Earth, a ravenous black hole is devouring galactic grub. Its feeding frenzy produces so much energy, it stirs up gas across its entire galaxy.

Most glowing galaxy in the universe is going through a devastating destruction

Extreme turbulence in galaxy W2246-0526, also termed as the ‘most luminous galaxy’, could eject almost all the star-forming gas in it astronomers have noted. Galaxy W2246-0526 is 12.4 billion light years away and the data was analyzed from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Tanio Díaz-Santos of the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile informed that the galaxy is so turbulent that it is ripping itself apart.

SpaceX to land rocket on drone barge. Is that a big deal?

SpaceX will attempt to land a rocket on a drone barge for the third time. Following the historic success of the rocket company's successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket on land, expectations are high for Sunday's water attempt.

SpaceX will make a third attempt to safely land a rocket on a drone ship Sunday.
SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by CEO Elon Musk, made history in December after successfully landing a Falcon 9 rocket stage on land. The company will attempt to replicate the landing again Sunday, but this time at sea using a drone barge as a moveable platform.

SpaceX has tried to land a rocket on an ocean-going vessel previously, in January and April of last year, but both landings resulted in damage to the rocket. The rocket company views the ability to land at sea as vital to its reusable rocket business model.

Machimosaurus rex: Paleontologists discover terrifying ancient crocodile the size of a bus

National Geographic / YouTubeFederico Fanti and his research team discovered the giant Cretaceous crocodile skeleton in Tunisia.

Paleontologists searching far and wide in Tunisia made a discovery of massive proportions: the world’s largest sea-dwelling crocodile, previously unknown to science.

This prehistoric crocodile is believed to have measured more than 9 metres long and weighed three tonnes. The skull alone is roughly 1.5 metres long. Researchers named the new species the Machimosaurus rex and described their findings this week in the journal Cretaceous Research.

“Massive” is how lead author Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna described the crocodile. “It’s just big. It’s almost the size of a bus.”

NASA spots (possible) ice volcano on Pluto

NASA has released a new photograph taken by its New Horizons spacecraft that shows what researchers believe is a cryovolcano — that is, an ice volcano — on Pluto. The image was taken last summer and shows a part of Pluto known as Wright Mons. NASA points toward a number of intriguing features that hint at active volcanoes in Pluto’s past -- the volcano spotted this time around is one of a possible pair.


According to the space agency, Wright Mons measures about 90 miles from one side to the other and is about 2.5 miles high. Whether this region is an ice volcano isn’t confirmed, but is suspected, and if such suspicion proves true, NASA says it would be the biggest of its kind found in the outer solar system.

Audi Lunar Quattro Enters Google Lunar XPRIZE Hunt

I know what you’re thinking. “Wait, the same Audi that manufacturers automobiles wants to land on the moon?” The answer is yes, that same company (Audi) will be landing a rover on the moon by 2017 and have partnered up with Google Lunar XPRIZE Part Time Scientists to make it really happen.

While teaming up with Google Lunar XPRIZE, there do come some requirements that will need to be met. The rover must travel at least half a kilometer and send back high resolution photos and videos back to Earth. The rover also needs to be launched to the moon by 2017 while landing on a specific target on the moon not too far from where Apollo 17 landed back in the 70’s. It’ll take 5 days for the moon rover to land on the moon and will cost around $26.2 million.

Audi is naming their moon rover “Audi Lunar Quattro” and it weighs in at 77.2 pounds. It’s made out of high strength aluminum and does plan on becoming lighter by trying to integrate magnesium. Top speed is only 2.2 mph, which as we all know isn’t fast at all, but when you’re on the moon it’s better to be safe than sorry. Audi Lunar Quattro has a solar panel that’ll swivel, two stereo cameras capturing 3D images, and four wheels that can turn 360 degrees. A third camera will be placed on the rover to take panoramic photos and for studying its surroundings.

China successfully launches Belintersat-1 telecommunications satellite into orbit

Archive Photo of Long March 3B launch. Photo Credit: China Daily

China has begun its busy year of space launches with a flawless liftoff of the Belintersat-1 telecommunications satellite from the LC3 launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, located in Sichuan Province. The mission commenced at 11:57 EST (16:57 GMT) on Friday, Jan. 15, when a Long March 3B rocket ignited its four boosters and started a short vertical ascent.

Photo Credit: Belintersat

Burning its core stage’s engines, the rocket began to pitch over and roll, heading southeast, shortly after liftoff. The shutdown of the boosters occurred about two minutes and 20 seconds into the flight and they were jettisoned about one minute later. Then, the vehicle continued its mission powered by the core stage alone, equipped in one four-chamber engine, until its separation about two minutes and 40 seconds after the launch.

'Hobbit' gets a neighbor: Stone tools hint at archaic human presence

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Researchers discover stone tools on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, indicating that archaic humans were present at least 118,000 years ago.

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When early humans began trekking out of Africa, they spread across Eurasia on foot. As some made it down into then-peninsular Southeast Asia, they would have run into a watery boundary, called Wallace's Line, that scientists thought essentially uncrossable by animals until around 50,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens arrived with boat technology.

But somehow another human species had crossed into that island region, called Wallacea, long before H. sapiens even reached Southeast Asia. In 2004, archaeologists discovered fossils of an archaic human, H. floresiensis, nicknamed "Hobbit" for its stature, on the island of Flores, Indonesia.
Now, research reveals Flores may not have been the only human-populated island in the region at the time. Scientists recently unearthed stone tools on the neighboring island of Sulawesi that date to between 118,000 and 194,000 years ago.

China shoots for first landing on dark side of moon

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BEIJING - China will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the moon in two years’ time, state media reported, in what will be a first for humanity.

The moon’s far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored.

China’s Chang’e-4 probe - named for the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology - will be sent to it in 2018, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“The Chang’e-4’s lander and rover will make a soft landing on the back side of the moon, and will carry out in-place and patrolling surveys,” it cited the country’s lunar exploration chief Liu Jizhong as saying on Thursday.

Spacewalk suspended after leak in U.S. astronaut's helmet

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ESA astronaut Tim Peake takes part in his 4 hour 43 minute spacewalk to replace a failed power regulator and install cabling for the International Space Station

NASA cut short a spacewalk on Friday at the International Space Station after one of the astronauts reported a leak in his spacesuit helmet, the U.S. space agency said.

Tim Peake, who on the mission became the first astronaut from Britain to walk in space, and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra had finished the primary goal of their outing when Kopra reported a water ball had formed in his helmet.

The astronauts were not in any danger, but NASA curtailed the spacewalk as a precaution, flight director Royce Renfrew said during an interview on NASA TV.

Peake, 43, a former army major, blasted off to the station as part of a six-month mission for the European Space Agency in December, becoming the first Briton in space since Helen Sharman travelled on a Soviet spacecraft for eight days in 1991, and the first to do so under a British flag.

SpaceX success launches space startups to new heights

A remodeled version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the launcher’s first mission since a June failure in Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 21, 2015.

Reuters/Joe Skipper

SpaceX's successful landing of a reusable rocket booster last month opens a new frontier for commercial space startups by offering tremendous cost savings and attracting venture capitalists who once shied away from spatial ventures.Space startups include nano-satellite makers, earth-imaging and weather-tracking technology developers, and ventures with ambitious plans to mine asteroids.

 If this fledgling industry can reuse rockets, that will save money and accelerate the pace of launches, enabling startups to more quickly test and update their technology, and replace old satellites more frequently - all critical for growing revenue.
"Driving down the cost of the launch, which is the single greatest barrier to entry for the startups and the investors ... makes (space startups) much more viable," said Jeff Matthews, director of venture strategy and research at the Space Frontier Foundation, a space advocacy nonprofit.

3D-printed moon base could be Mars pit stop

European Space Agency outlines plan to build settlements on the moon by 2030

With all the world’s focus on New Horizons’ mission to Pluto and the possibility of colonising Mars, the moon doesn’t get much of a look in nowadays. “Been there, done that” is a tempting sentiment, but the European Space Agency is giving the moon a second look, with tentative plans to 3D-print “moon villages” that astronauts could stay in for months at a time, as an alternative to the International Space Station, by 2030.

It’s not a far-fetched idea, according to an international symposium hosted last month, entitled “Moon 2020-2030 – A new era of co-ordinated human and robotic exploration”. Robots would be sent to the moon in the early 2020s to construct the basic structures, and astronauts would follow a couple of years later.

Reflections on COP 21: The Paris Agreement

Part I: InSpired about Our Future...and Our Children's Future
Twilight on the Winter Solstice, the sun emit such a rich magnetic glow across our marine sanctuary in Chrystal Cove that it seemed to literally hold back the heavy, ominous, ashen black clouds hovering over the horizon. Running the Cove and watching closely the impending storm; I thought: " How is it that this magic light can both temper such a dark storm, and yet summon the richest colors, render the truest hues from all things painted across the living landscape?"

And so it was in Paris... despite the threat of anomalous and escalating climate change (once perceived as science fiction and now clearly and nearly universally accepted as science fact), a bright light omnipresent throughout COP 21 seemed to ultimately illuminate the best of human nature and inspire an impressive ambience of global cooperation when and where most needed to drive dialogue in the right positive, collective direction.

How much would you weigh if you could stand on the sun? Astronomers discover how to measure the pull of gravity on distant stars

• The technique is called the 'autocorrelation function timescale technique'
• It uses subtle variations in the brightness of distant stars
• Knowing the surface gravity of a star determines how much a person would weigh on that star
• On the sun, an average person would weigh 20 times more than on Earth

Despite having a surface temperature of around 5,505°C (9,941°F) making it impossible to host human life, astronomers have been able to determine how much an average person would weigh if it was actually possible to stand on the sun.

Using a new technique that measures the brightness of such stars, astronomers believe they have discovered a way to measure surface gravity with an accuracy of 4 per cent. 

Using this method, the researchers have confirmed that an average person would weigh 20 times more on the sun than on Earth, but would be 50 times lighter on a typical red giant star.

Strong magnetic fields very common in stars: Study

Using a recently developed technique to detect magnetic fields inside stars, a team of astronomers has discovered that these are very common in stars.

“We have applied a novel theoretical idea that we developed just a few months ago to thousands of stars and the results are just extraordinary,” said one of the researchers Matteo Cantiello from University of California-Santa Barbara.

READ: Lion dives into Arabian sea but gets rescued

Keeping aside the dramatic quotient, these forest department officials should be really proud of themselves for saving the life of a lion!

An Asiatic lion sitting on the edge of the rock on the beach of is sure set to create a buzz among the onlookers, but what happened when the animal just jumped into the Arabian sea?

The presence of a lion was enough to bring many shutterbugs to the Jafrabad Port in Gujarat but when the animal dived into the Arabian sea, few fishermen present there rushed to the forest department and informed about the incident.

Beijing air quality improved in 2015, says China

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An improvement in Beijing’s air quality last year over 2014 may have had more to do with weather patterns than with a decline in emissions, environmental experts say.

The Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said the average concentration of PM2.5 particles — used as a proxy for measuring air quality — at 81 micrograms per cubic metre, was down 6 per cent from 2014’s average of nearly 86 micrograms and 10 per cent from 90 in 2013.

Tiniest chameleons have most powerful tongues

A new research has unveiled that a certain pygmy chameleons actually have the most powerful tongues. The tiniest chameleons can shoot their tongues out around 2. 5 times their body length to capture preys like cricket or morsel, unveiled the research paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Chameleons not only have long tongues, but they are speedy too. Their tongue can accelerate at a rate of up to 264 times the acceleration of gravity. Study researchers have said that the chameleon does need more than 20 milliseconds to grab its prey.

Astrophysicists discover new technique to find habitable planets

 

It's a question scientists have been trying to crack for years: How can we tell if a planet is able to sustain life? Well, a team of astrophysicists recently developed a new tool to help find the answer. (Video via NASA)
The team, led by a researcher at the University of Vienna, devised a way to measure the surface gravity of distant stars to help determine if the planets in their orbit have life-supporting conditions.