Free Republic

NASA's new Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer spacecraft is a tiny satellite with the unique ability to capture images in X-ray with polarization and timing information for every photon captured. It's designed to operate for 2 years and capture new scientific measurements of some of the most extreme places in the universe with gravitational and magnetic fields that would destroy ordinary matter.And in an interesting turn of events the satellite switched from the intended launch vehicle to a cheaper option that nobody considered - the Falcon 9. This is the first time we've seen a rocket lauched from a domestic US...

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, the United States feared that nuclear missiles would soon follow. How could we stop them? In the Dr. Strangelove era, no idea was too absurd, and Nicholas Christofilos, an elevator engineer turned nuclear physicist, had a doozy. Christofilos had only undergraduate degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering, but he had become a top military scientist at California's Livermore Laboratory with a reputation for audacious creativity. He suggested that an atomic explosion in space could generate a vast flux of electrons, which would form a shell of energy over Earth, a phenomenon...

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91. The University of Iowa, where he taught for years, announced the death in a statement on its Web site. Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth. The bands later named in his honor and spawned a whole new field of research known as...

Proposal: Removing Earth's Radiation Belts By Leonard David posted: 07:00 am ET 16 September 2002 Here's a cinch of an idea: How about a little Van Allen Belt tightening? By using highly charged orbiting space tethers, the Earth's cocoon of menacing and deadly radiation belts might be easily and largely aced out. For one, satellites in the future could live longer not having to fend off the frenzy of energetic particles. Moreover, human-carrying spacecraft would be far safer zooming about in Earth orbit or speeding outward to distant destinations. The novel concept is called the High Voltage Orbiting Long...