President detailed operations in ceremony, including defending against Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons, and promised space force will soon follow
It was one small step for man, one giant leap for Trumpkind.
Donald Trump made the short journey on Thursday from the Oval Office to the White House Rose Garden, then promised to unleash an army of space warriors to infinity and beyond.
Continue reading...Astronauts will no longer be able to urinate on bus that picks them up for launch
Russia has unveiled a new space suit but the design may have to be changed to continue a decades-old tradition – making a stop to pee on the way to the launch.
The Sokol-M prototype suit was designed as a replacement for suits worn during launches to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz spacecraft.
Continue reading...As the country seeks to establish itself as a space power, audiences are developing an appetite for the extraterrestrial on the big screen
In 2014, India sent the Mars Orbiter Mission into space, and became the first country to send a satellite to orbit the planet at its first attempt – putting its much richer regional rival China in the shade as it became the first Asian nation to get to the red planet. The project was notable for being led by a team of female scientists; as is India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2 (from the Sanskrit for “moon craft”), which was launched last month and is due to land on the moon in early September. And as the country establishes itself as a space power, Indians have developed an appetite for sci-fi themes in its cinema.
The patriotic outburst that followed the Mars mission has fuelled the latest example of Indian space cinema: Mission Mangal (Sanskrit for Mars), a fictionalised account of the Orbiter Mission. Starring and produced by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, it is due for release on 15 August, India’s Independence Day. “I would follow the news about India’s space missions and feel proud of what we were achieving,” says Kumar. “But through Mission Mangal I guess you could say I have an insider’s perspective.”
Continue reading...Scientists believe the Beresheet’s unusual cargo may be alive and well on the moon
The odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.
The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth.
Continue reading...Our galaxy is like a distorted disc, study based on Cepheid stars confirms
The most detailed three-dimensional map yet of the Milky Way has been revealed, showing that our galaxy is not a flat disc but has a “warped” shape like a fascinator hat or a vinyl record that has been left in the sun.
“The stars 60,000 light years away from the Milky Way’s centre are as far as 4,500 [light years] above or below the galactic plane – this is a big percentage,” said Dr Dorota Skowron of the University of Warsaw, first author of the latest research.
Continue reading...With first mission to land on lunar south pole, India aims to join club comprising Russia, US and China
India’s mission to the moon has blasted into space one week after a technical glitch forced scientists to abruptly halt its scheduled launch.
Thousands gathered to watch Chandrayaan-2 take off at 2.43pm local time (0913 GMT) on Monday from Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, north of Chennai.
Continue reading...India’s mission to the moon has blasted into space one week after a technical glitch forced scientists to abruptly halt its scheduled launch. Thousands gathered to watch Chandrayaan-2 take off on Monday from Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, north of Chennai. It will travel to the little-explored south pole of the moon
Continue reading...As Donald Trump reiterated his determination that Americans should walk on Mars, Mike Pence marked the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing at the Apollo 11 launch site in Florida on Saturday.
Related: Trump revives the idea of a ‘white man’s country’, America’s original sin | Nell Painter
Continue reading...The Apollo 11 mission inspired the world. What has happened in the ensuing half-century?
When Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon 50 years ago, it was down to a giant leap of political and scientific imagination. His footprints on the powdery lunar surface changed the way we saw ourselves, confirming that humanity could escape its earthly coils. The mission unleashed a dream of what we as a species might do. Yet only a dozen people have walked on the moon, all between the summer of 1969 and the end of 1972.
Did we lose our primordial urge to explore? Almost certainly not – though Buzz Aldrin this week decried “50 years of non-progress”, probes have travelled to Pluto and beyond. But times have changed. The cold war rivalry that catalysed the space race vanished. The Soviet Union was first with a satellite, dog and astronaut in space. Today Washington and Moscow play the great game in the Middle East, not the heavens, although both are now contemplating a return to the moon: Donald Trump wants to make America great again by putting astronauts there by 2024, though some think China may get there first; Russia talks of landing cosmonauts by 2030.
Continue reading...Photographers from Sydney to Brasilia capture July’s stunning partial lunar eclipse
Stargazers around the world have enjoyed a view of a global lunar eclipse, delighting people from Dehli to Dublin.
The partial eclipse was visible in nearly every part of the world except for North America and the polar climes of Greenland and northern Russia.
Continue reading...Aerogel sheet mimics Earth’s greenhouse effect and could help to create fertile oases
For future astronauts bound for Mars it will surely rank as a positive: when they sit down to dinner on the barren red planet, they should at least have plenty of greens.
The harsh environment on Mars has always made growing food a daunting prospect, but scientists believe they have cracked the problem with sheets of material that can transform the cold, arid surface into land fit for farming.
Continue reading...Nation’s first attempt at a landing on the moon put on hold due to ‘technical snag’
India’s moon mission, destined for the uncharted south pole, has been put on hold less than an hour before take off, following a technical glitch.
The mission, which was scheduled to launch at 02:51 local time from Sriharikota space centre, north of Chennai, is India’s most ambitious to date.
Continue reading...Mandla Maseko, a DJ who won the chance to be the first black African in space, has died in a motorbike accident
A South African man who won the chance to be the first black African in space has died in a motorbike crash before turning his dream into reality.
Mandla Maseko, a part-time DJ and candidate officer with the South African air force, was nicknamed “Afronaut” after landing a coveted seat to fly 103km (64 miles) into space in 2013 in a competition organised by a US-based space academy.
Continue reading...Best views were in the Atacama desert, where a total eclipse has not occurred since 1592
Hundreds of thousands of tourists scattered across the north Chilean desert on Tuesday to experience a rare and irresistible combination for astronomy buffs: a total eclipse of the sun viewed from beneath the world’s clearest skies.
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, plunging the planet into darkness. It happens only rarely in any given spot across the globe.
Continue reading...Tapes identified in 2008 as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing in 1969 are to go up for auction in July
When Gary George bought a truckload of videotapes for $218 from a US government surplus auction more than 40 years ago, he planned to sell them to television stations – to record over.
Fortunately, he decided to hold on to the three tapes labelled “Apollo 11 EVA”, which have since been identified as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing, in 1969.
Continue reading...Curiosity’s record-breaking measurement fuels speculation it is from microbial Martians
Nasa’s Curiosity rover has detected its largest belch of methane on Mars so far, fuelling speculation that the robot may have trundled through a cloud of waste gas released by microbial Martians buried deep under the surface.
Mission scientists announced on Monday that Curiosity had measured a record-breaking 21 parts per billion (ppb) of methane in the air in Gale crater, the rover’s landing site and area of exploration. The level is substantially more than the 5.8ppb it sensed on 16 June 2013.
Continue reading...Breakthrough Listen project found no evidence of alien civilisations on 1,327 stars
The close encounter will have to wait. Astronomers have come up empty-handed after scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life in the most extensive search ever performed.
Researchers used ground-based telescopes to eavesdrop on 1,327 stars within 160 light years of Earth. During three years of observations they found no evidence of signals that could plausibly come from an alien civilisation.
Continue reading...President tweeted Nasa should focus on ‘Mars (of which the Moon is a part)’ over going to the moon, a reversal of previous remarks
Followers of astronomy were in for a surprise on Friday, when Donald Trump announced that the moon is part of Mars.
In a tweet, apparently commenting on his own administration’s space policy, the president said: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago.”
Continue reading...Blast-off makes China the third country after US and Russia to master sea launch technology
China has launched a rocket from a mobile platform at sea for the first time, sending five commercial satellites and two others containing experimental technology into space.
The Long March 11 rocket blasted off from a launch pad onboard a commercial ship in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Shandong province – the 306th Long March rocket launch, but the first one at sea.
Continue reading...Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellites ‘have no public consensus and may impair view of the cosmos’
Mega constellations of human-made satellites could soon blight the view of the night sky, astronomers warned following the launch of Elon Musk’s Starlink probes last week.
The first 60 of an intended 12,000 satellites were successfully blasted into orbit on Thursday by Musk’s company, SpaceX, which plans to use them to beam internet communication from space down to Earth.
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