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.
Continue reading...Scientists say surge of radiation led to lightning causing forest fires, making adaptation vital
It was the evolutionary leap that defined the species: while other apes ambled around on all fours, the ancestors of humans rose up on two legs and, from that lofty position, went on to conquer the world.
The benefits of standing tall in the African savannah are broadly nailed down, but what prompted our distant forebears to walk upright is far from clear. Now, in a radical proposal, US scientists point to a cosmic intervention: protohumans had a helping hand from a flurry of exploding stars, they say.
Continue reading...A hundred years ago this month, the British astronomer Arthur Eddington arrived at the remote west African island of Príncipe. He was there to witness and record one of the most spectacular events to occur in our heavens: a total solar eclipse that would pass over the little equatorial island on 29 May 1919.
Observing such events is a straightforward business today, but a century ago the world was still recovering from the first world war. Scientific resources were meagre, photographic technology was relatively primitive, and the hot steamy weather would have made it difficult to focus instruments. For good measure, there was always a threat that clouds would blot out the eclipse.
Continue reading...Scientists analyse whether gravitational wave detectors picked up signs of collision
Astronomers may have spotted a neutron star being swallowed by a black hole for the first time, marked by a belch of gravitational waves rippling across the cosmos.
If confirmed, the detection by the twin Ligo detectors in the US and the Virgo detector in Italy would be the first evidence that black holes and neutron stars can pair up in binary systems. The observations could also reveal new details about the nature of such dramatic mergers, including whether the neutron star was ripped apart before crossing the black hole’s threshold or whether it slid seamlessly into oblivion.
Continue reading...SpaceX delivery delayed after old power-switching unit malfunctions
The International Space Station has been hit by a major power shortage that has forced a delivery from SpaceX to be delayed.
SpaceX was supposed to launch a shipment on Wednesday. But an old power-switching unit malfunctioned at the space station on Monday and knocked two power channels offline. The six remaining power channels still worked normally, according to Nasa.
Continue reading...Helium hydride is thought to have played starring role in early universe
The most ancient type of molecule in our universe has been detected in space, scientists have revealed, backing up theories of how the early chemistry of the universe developed after the big bang.
The positively charged molecule known as helium hydride is believed to have played a starring role in the early universe, forming when a helium atom shared its electrons with a hydrogen nucleus, or proton. Not only is it thought to be the first molecular bond, and first chemical compound, to have appeared as the universe cooled after the big bang, but it also opened up the path to the formation of molecules of hydrogen.
Continue reading...A manned giant six-engine aircraft with the world’s longest wingspan – surpassing Howard Hughes’s infamous Spruce Goose – took off from California on its first flight on Saturday. The twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave air and space port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles. It successfully landed two hours later. The aircraft is designed to carry as many as three satellite-laden rockets under the centre of its enormous wing, which stretches 385ft, or 117 metres
Airplane with world's longest wingspan takes flight, beating Spruce Goose record
Continue reading...Stratolaunch jet, brainchild of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, may be used to launch small satellites into space
A giant six-engine aircraft with the world’s longest wingspan – surpassing Howard Hughes’ infamous Spruce Goose – took off from California on its first flight on Saturday.
The behemoth, twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave Air and Space Port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles. It landed two hours later.
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