Major scientific endeavors like space exploration require decades of planning and funding sources that can weather economic downturns. Will the results of the Google Lunar X Prize competition stand that assumption on its head?
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The NASA Earth Observatory has been doing an excellent job of monitoring the eruption at Eritrea’s Nabro using all their eyes in the sky. The latest image, taken from the […]
The next-generation spaceship chosen to fly American astronauts into orbit and back may look a lot like N.A.S.A.’s soon-to-be-retired space shuttle—and it even has N.A.S.A. roots, too.
The eruption of Nabro in Eritrea has been a bit of an enigma, mostly because the volcano is (a) so remote and (b) it’s previous activity is mostly unknown. In […]
While satellites and infrastructure crumble, we are also witnessing an explosion in space tourism that is exposing the gap between the Haves and Have-Nots in space.
Brief post today after a few longer ones … but first, A reminder: Tomorrow (Friday July 1) is the deadline to submit your questions for Dr. Clive Oppenheimer. Take this opportunity […]
Do charities exist simply to exist or do they exist to achieve something specific? Peter Thum says social entrepreneurship can address issues we once thought were impossible to tackle.
In case you missed some of the volcanic activity that wasn’t in Chile or Eritrea (I know I did), here is the (slightly late from me) Global Volcanism ProgramWeekly Volcanic […]
After spending years building robots at MIT’s Media Lab and doing stints at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Heather Knight is now a PhD student in social robotics at Carnegie Mellon. […]
1. So my post on NASA provoked a variety of most thoughtful responses. The ones by Brendan were the most detailed and philosophic, but they were all worthwhile. 2. Their […]
A showdown over the course of Solar System exploration has ended with a qualified victory for Mars. NASA firmly favours a mission to Mars over a rival one to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will come closer to Earth this autumn than our own moon does, causing scientists to hold their breath (with excitement, not worry) as it zooms by.
UPDATE 8:00 PM (Eastern): It looks like Bariloche is being heaviest hit by the ash from the eruption – looks like a lot of ash on the ground in the resort town. You can see […]
You are looking at the first color image of Mercury from orbit. It was taken by NASA’s Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which is on a mission to “unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System’s innermost planet.”
A group of astrophysicists believe they have discovered the first potentially habitable exoplanet, named Gliese 581d. And there could be billions more just like it.
Physicists at Stanford, who have spearheaded the billion-dollar Gravity Probe B mission, have announced that they have found Einstein’s missing inch, once again proving the correctness of general relativity. According […]
Since Dennis Tito became the first space tourist at the beginning of the last decade, the commercial space industry has taken a great leap forward.
Near-Earth Asteroids are a threat to our planet, but they also represent an opportunity to generate enormous wealth, and may drive the commercial space race.
The eruption that started Saturday at Puyehue-Cordón Caulle along the Chilean-Argentine border is still going – and still causing problems for people living in the zone where ash and pumice […]
The first total lunar eclipse of 2011 took place less than a week ago although people residing in North America weren’t able to enjoy it. This time around, people in […]
The Allen Telescope Array, a set of 42 radio telescopes that has been searching for alien signals and conducting astronomical research since 2007, has been shut down due to budget cuts.
Alright, so the title of the post is a little cheeky, but right now it appears that the eruption of Grímsvötn that started last Saturday (May 21) is for all intents […]
It has been a while since we’ve had what I would consider a “busy” Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report – but this week, there is a ton of […]
As quickly as it started, the eruption at Grímsvötn seems to be ending. Ash emissions from the volcano ceased early this morning (Iceland time) and now only steam plumes remain […]
After the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center this week, there will only be one more space shuttle mission left before the era of NASA’s manned […]
Today is May 18 and that marks the date of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington that killed 57 people (video). I don’t have an elaborate post […]
This week ended up being a little busier than I expected – I had to make that quick transition from wedding/honeymoon to beginning to prepare for my field/labwork coming up […]
Fifty years after Gagarin, plans abound for crewed missions into deeper space. A near-Earth asteroid landing, one-way trip to Mars, or hover point hiatus in mid-space, anyone?
Less than a decade after sending its first human into orbit, Beijing is working on a multi-capsule outpost in space. The project proves that power is shifting among nations with space ambitions.
Prognostics is a field within engineering to predict when a system or a component within that system will no longer function as designed or is likely to fail. For example, […]