Armadillo Aerospace has won the Level One portion of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge! They flew at Las Cruces International Airport on October 25, 2008, and earned the $350,000 in prize money. While they made an attempt to win Level Two on the 26, they weren’t able to pull off a double victory, leaving $1.65 million worth of prize money on the table. Check out some highlights from the first day of competition..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Website Link: http://space.xprize.org
Archive for the 'Space & Discovery' Category
In space you have to drink everything from a bag and a straw, but now one of the members on the ISS has made a video demonstration of drinking coffee from a cup in the weightless environment.
Video Link: www.youtube.com
The cuboid Chandrayaan-1 moon vehicle blasted off from a southern Indian space centre shortly after dawn in a boost for the country’s ambitions to gain more global space business..
Article Link: www.newscientist.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
When Hubble sends its incredible images to Earth, they are in black and white, but after a year later they glow with a rainbow of coded hues..
Info Link: www.youtube.com
In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope took the image of a millenium, an image that shows our place in the universe. Anyone who understands what this image represents, is forever changed by it..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 became the first privately designed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth’s orbit. The California-based company launched the rocket from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and it successfully reached orbit more than 300 miles above the surface of the Earth. This was their fourth attempt at making it into orbit..
Article Link: www.popularmechanics.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
So whats the Phoenix Lander been doing after 70 Martian days? Its been very busy testing soil samples in its different chemistry labs..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
In a speech that takes us from the origins of the universe to the last days of a dying sun 6 billion years later, renowned cosmologist Sir Martin Rees explains why the 21st century is a pivotal moment in the history of humanity: the first time in history when we can materially change ourselves and our planet. Stunning imagery of cosmological wonders show us the universe as we know it now. Speaking as “a concerned member of the human race,” Rees harkens to the wisdom of Einstein, calling for scientists to act as moral compasses, confronting the coming developments and ensuring our role in “the immense future.
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or Aurora Borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky. The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Cassini is a space craft that traveled for seven years to get to Saturn, so it could study the ringed planet and its moons at close range. It made it into Saturns orbit by July 2004. It has now started its extended mission during which Cassini will make follow-up observations of the features it has discovered since it began. In the video below the lead Cassini project manager takes you on a tour of her favourite images from the past four years of the mission..
Article Link: www.newscientist.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com (Part 1)
Video Link: www.youtube.com (Part 2)
Video Link: www.youtube.com (Part 3)
Video Link: www.youtube.com (Part 4)
In the video below NASA explains how the Phoenix has been cooking samples in its ovens and has been successfully returning its results to earth, also they have been able to confirm the traces of water on mars. The video contains some great images from Phoenix and its landscape around it, as well as some of how its ovens work..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
NASA believes they have evidence that the white stuff in their photos is ice! Once sum small dice sized pieces came loose after a dig, and when they took a photo of the trench 4 days later the small piece had disappeared. Leading them to believe it had evaporated, which proves the white is not salt but ice..
Article Link: www.nasa.gov
Filmed April 2007, Stephen Hawking opens up to a Discovery News reporter and says how he feels about exploring space for humans..
Info Link: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
A Sol is one day on Mars, so after 9 Martian days, what is Phoenix up to? Well they have been testing the robotic arm, and have done some test digs to make sure everything is ok. They have also discovered some white material just under the surface in the first dig, lets hope its ice..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This is a summary version of ‘The Universe: Secrets of The Sun’, the full version is about 45min long and is well worth the watch, as well as the rest of the series. Watch the video to learn about how our sun was created, works, and is going to die and destroy the earth..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars yesterday after its 422-million-mile (679-million-km) flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007. Phoenix is to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm. For more information and photos follow the link below..
Official Website: www.nasa.gov
This is a very interesting video on galaxies in the universe and how they act and collide with one another..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
These may look similar, but are vastly different. On the left we have Galaxy M101, and on the right Typhoon Rammasun. Rammasun was only a thousand kilometers or so across while M101 (aka the Pinwheel Galaxy) spans about 170,000 light-years. These do look amazingly alike tho, each with arms exhibiting the shape of a simple and beautiful mathematical curve known as a logarithmic spiral..
Article Link: http://apod.nasa.gov
The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in space. Assembly of ISS began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, it has an altitude of approximately 350 km (217 mi) above the surface of the Earth, and travels at an average speed of 27,700 km (17,210 statute miles) per hour, completing 15.77 orbits per day..
Official Website: www.nasa.gov
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Did you know there’s a black hole in the center of our galaxy? Kasey-Dee Gardner asks the astronomer who discovered it 3 questions..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This one minute video visually demonstrates how tiny the earth is, as well as how tiny our sun and the other planets are..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This speech which is done by Professor Steven Hawkings is called ‘Why we should go into space’ and is the third in a series of NASA lectures featuring prominent leaders who discuss the benefits provided by space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research to the economy, education, health, and the environment..
Article Link: www.nasa.gov
Video Link (part 1): www.youtube.com
Video Link (part 2): www.youtube.com
Video Link (part 3): www.youtube.com
Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist, specializing in string field theory, and a futurist. He is a popularizer of science, host of two radio programs, and a best-selling author. If anyone can predict time travel its this man..
Michio Kaku Info: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
The ISS (International Space Station) just became more international with the additions of the first part of the Japanese space laboratory named KibÅ which means Hope, and Canada’s robotic arm system called Dextre, which will now perform a lot of the ISS’s general maintenance instead of having astronauts do it in space walks..
KibÅ Info: www.wikipedia.org
Dextre Info: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
I love Google products, not just because they are free, but that they provide soooo much valuable information in a simple and easy way anyone can use. With an update they have made to Google Earth you can now explore space! They use images from NASA and Telescopes around the world to create a beautiful experience of flying through space..
Google Earth Download: www.google.com/earth
Video Link: www.youtube.com
A supernova is a stellar explosion that creates an extremely luminous object. A supernova causes a burst of radiation that may briefly outshine its entire host galaxy before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval, a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun would emit over 10 billion years. The explosion expels much or all of a star’s material at a velocity of up to a tenth the speed of light..
Article Link: www.wikipedia.org
Website Link: www.youtube.com
Below is the famous “Blue Marble” shot, this is the first photograph in which Earth is in full view. The picture was taken on December 7, 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew left Earth’s orbit for the moon. With the sun at their backs, the crew had a perfectly lit view of the blue planet.
Take a look at the gallery linked to see how far we have come at capturing images in space..
Article Link: www.nationalgeographic.com
Its currently in mission phase 3 called Cruise, which means its flying to Mars. Once it arrives the Phoenix’s assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves. The Phoenix could be the key to knowing if we can create sustainable life on Mars..
Article Link: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
Video Link: www.youtube.com
A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape after having fallen past its event horizon. The name comes from the fact that even light is unable to escape, rendering the interior invisible. However, black holes can be detected if they interact with matter outside the event horizon, for example by drawing in gas from an orbiting star. The gas spirals inward, heating up to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation in the process..
Article Link: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Europa is a large moon of Jupiter. Its surface is made of ice, which may have an ocean of water beneath it. Such an ocean could provide a home for living things. The surface layer of ice or ice and water is 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 km) deep..
Article Link: www.nasa.gov
Video Link: www.youtube.com
ATHLETE is capable of rolling over Apollo-like undulating terrain and “walking” over extremely rough or steep terrain so that robotic or human missions on the surface of the Moon can load, transport, manipulate, and deposit payloads to essentially any desired sites of interest..
Article Link: nasa.gov
Video Link: youtube.com
