ATK Technologies on Display as NASA Launches Next Mars Rover
Updated: 2011-11-27 16:58:15
ATK Technologies on Display as NASA Launches Next Mars Rover
While NASA’s Curiosity rover is en route to Mars, the Opportunity robot has been busy scoping out sites for the approaching winter on the red planet. Opportunity is on the prowl for locations with a favorable northerly tilt on the north end of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater. Such sites need to [...]
Yesterday morning, NASA successfully launched the Mars Science Laboratory — named Curiosity — toward the fourth planet. If, like me, you missed the launch itself (^%$#@&! sinuses) why then, here’s some pretty dramatic video of the liftoff: [Make sure to set it to 720p resolution!] The cool parts to watch are: about 2 minutes in [...]
Exploring Mars – Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery by Scott Hubbard; University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona; $17.95 (paperback); February 2012. As I write this today, NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover is outbound for the red planet. It has been a long haul for the robot to get en route. It experienced its own set [...]
Preparations for launch of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket are on schedule for 10:02 a.m. EST this morning.
RickJ submitted this amazing image of the double star Albireo through the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today forum. “I only had about 20 minutes before the target I wanted would be getting too close the the meridian to get much on the east side before it went into the “Meridian Tree”. It would be too [...]
The much-anticipated Mars Science Laboratory "Curiosity" sits on the Cape Canaveral launchpad, ready for Saturday's blast-off.
‘Mars Trek – Curiosity’s Search for Undiscovered Life’ has its galaxy wide premiere Saturday morning Nov. 26 at 10:02 a.m. EST – live on NASA TV. NASA’s quest ‘In Search of Life’ takes a bold leap in less than 12 hours with the Nov. 26 blastoff of “Curiosity”, the most complex and scientifically advanced robotic [...]
[UPDATE: SUCCESS! The launch was just about perfect, and Curiosity is now on its way to Mars, scheduled to land in August 2012. Congrats to everyone on the mission!] Tomorrow, Saturday, November 26 at 10:02 Eastern (US) time (15:02 UTC), an Atlas V rocket carrying the Curiosity Mars rover will blast off from Florida, sending [...]
Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for astronomers that allows them to explore distant galaxies in far more detail than would otherwise be allowed. Without this technique, galaxies at the edge of the visible universe are little more than tiny blobs of light, but when magnified dozens of times by foreground clusters, astronomers are able [...]
On November 15, the Sun had a minor eruption on its surface that launched a prominence — a towering arc of ionized gas — into space. Sometimes these prominences collapse back down to the surface, and sometimes they wind up ejecting that material into space. This one did a little of both: The animation was [...]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, the most technologically complex and scientifically capable robot built by humans to explore the surface of another celestial body, is poised to liftoff on Nov. 26 and will enable a quantum leap in mankind’s pursuit of Martian microbes and signatures of life beyond Earth. “The Mars Science Lab and the rover [...]
In an article earlier this month, I discussed the potential for discovering moons orbiting extrasolar planets. I’d used an image of an exoplant system with rings, prompting one reader to ask if those would be possible to detect. Apparently he wasn’t the only person wondering. A new paper looks more at exomoons and explores exoring [...]
I put this up on Google+ and Twitter, so what the heck. My Thanksgiving wish to everyone: Courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half and my own superior and fearsome Photoshop skillz.
While the primary goal of NASA’s ambitious $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission is to assess the habitability of the Martian environment, U. S. space agency experts planning for the future human exploration of the Red Planet will be following the multi-year mission closely as well. The MSL/Curiosity rover mission is scheduled for [...]
The Curiosity rover is ready for its cruise to the red planet. If all stays on track, an Atlas V rocket will boost NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory into space on November 26th. On that day, the launch window for departure of the craft extends from 10:02 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The spacecraft [...]
NASA's $2.5 billion, car-sized rover is ready for an epic Mars mission. Are you? Here's how to get connected with Curiosity.
The one-ton Curiosity rover is the central payload for the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is due for launch at 10:02 a.m.
NASA’s little satellite that could, Swift, recently celebrated its seventh year in space. It blasted into orbit on November 20, 2004, starting a mission that would increase our understanding of the most violent events in the universe, and shatter cosmic distance records. I wrote about Swift six years ago, on the first anniversary of its [...]
160,000 light years away sits the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular dwarf galaxy that orbits our own Milky Way galaxy. It’s a fascinating object, actually, filled with stars, gas, dust, and all the usual trinkets a galaxy has. It also has an assortment of globular clusters — roughly spherical collections of a few hundred thousand [...]
I am extremely honored and pleased to announce that my talk, "An asteroid impact can ruin your whole day", is now featured on the TED website! I gave this talk in September at TEDxBoulder, and I had a fantastic time. The talks were great, and it was wonderful to be a part of that. However, [...]
Three astronauts have returned from the space station after an extended five-month stay in orbit.
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying three U. S., Russian and Japanese astronauts descended safely into remote Kazakhstan late Monday, ending a 167-day voyage to the International Space Station for the three men. Wintry conditions greeted Mike Fossum, Sergey Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa as their Soyuz 27 mission capsule landed under parachute north of Arkalyk at [...]
Tonight at 6:00 p.m. Pacific (US) time (02:00 UTC) I’ll be participating in the Desert Bus campaign to raise money for Child’s Play, a charity that supports kids with cancer. Desert Bus is a videogame produced as part of a package of minigames for Penn & Teller; in it you can drive a bus across [...]
It’s been a couple of months since scientists first reported the possibility of neutrinos traveling faster than light, a finding that if upheld would turn fundamental physics on its head. There’s been a lot of speculation about the possibility since then, but a majority of physicists seem to have dismissed it. However, there’s also been [...]
A business unit of the Schafer Corporation based in Albuquerque, New Mexico has teamed with MoonDust Technologies of Tucson, Arizona to pursue a unique line of products resulting from the use of Schafer’s proprietary microgravity production technology. The agreement grants MoonDust Technologies (MDT) the exclusive right to produce and sell these products worldwide and provides [...]
A few days ago, the US House and Senate compromised on a (partial) federal budget, and President Obama signed it into reality. Among many other things, NASA’s budget was in there. Congress has posted an overview of the bill, which I recommend perusing. Space News has an excellent overview of the budget, as does The [...]
On Friday, a news story came out that a second experiment seems to support the results of an earlier experiment which showed neutrinos might be moving faster than light. I commented about this on Google+ at the time, but I want to post about it here as well. Let me be clear: this new result [...]
Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration opens today, organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The just-opened exhibit launches visitors into the exciting future of space exploration as it boldly examines humanity’s next steps “out there” in our solar system and beyond. Visitors will be treated to a vision [...]
American astronaut Ron Garan may be the single best promoter of space exploration we have today, if only because of his breathtaking photographs of the Earth from space. In July 2011, as he orbited our planet in the International Space Station, he took this gorgeous shot of the crescent Moon, setting over the Earth’s silhouetted [...]
Shadows are created when a source of light is blocked. Obvious, right? Also obvious is the brighter the source, the easier it is to see the shadow cast. So you might wonder, how faint an object can you use as a light source and still be able to detect a shadow? We know the Sun [...]
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Home Blog Advertise The Sky This Month The Moon This Month Astronomy News Astrobiology Magazine News Astronomy Picture of the Day BBC Science News CNN Space News Earth Observatory News Eurekalert Astronomy Space News European Southern Observatory News European Space Agency News Gemini Observatory News Hubble Space Telescope News JPL News Kepler Telescope News Lunar and Planetary Institute News MSNBC Space News NASA Breaking News NASA PlanetQuest News NASA TV National Geographic News PBS Nova News Science at NASA News Scientific American News Space Shuttle News Space Today News STEREO Solar Mission News The Astronomer’s Telegram News The Space Show Wired Science News Astronomy Podcasts 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast Astronomy Cast Podcast Astronomy Magazine Podcast Earth Sky Podcast
Home Blog Advertise The Sky This Month The Moon This Month Astronomy News Astrobiology Magazine News Astronomy Picture of the Day BBC Science News CNN Space News Earth Observatory News Eurekalert Astronomy Space News European Southern Observatory News European Space Agency News Gemini Observatory News Hubble Space Telescope News JPL News Kepler Telescope News Lunar and Planetary Institute News MSNBC Space News NASA Breaking News NASA PlanetQuest News NASA TV National Geographic News PBS Nova News Science at NASA News Scientific American News Space Shuttle News Space Today News STEREO Solar Mission News The Astronomer’s Telegram News The Space Show Wired Science News Astronomy Podcasts 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast Astronomy Cast Podcast Astronomy Magazine Podcast Earth Sky Podcast