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"That's no moon. It's a space station." - Obi Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV A New HopeAir Force, Space Force: may the Force be with you. At a meeting of National Space Council intended to transfer space responsibilities from military to civilian hands, president Donald Trump surprised attendees by ordering the top US military officer to launch a new branch of the military in space.While the creation of a Space Force has been debated for several years, the move has been opposed by the military, which has instead begun restructuring the Air Force Space Command to better address threats in...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's seemingly unstoppable Mars rover Opportunity has been knocked out by a gigantic dust storm that is enveloping the red planet and blotting out the sun. Officials said Wednesday they're hopeful the rover will survive the storm, which already covers one-quarter of Mars and is expected to encircle the planet in another few days. It could be weeks or even months, though, until the sky clears enough for sunlight to reach the Martian surface and recharge Opportunity's batteries through its solar panels. For now, Mars' oldest working rover is stuck in the middle of the raging...

A woman has sued NASA, claiming to be the rightful owner of a small vial of moon dust supposedly given to her by Neil Armstrong. The US under Barack Obama passed a law in 2012 that gives astronauts full ownership rights to artifacts collected during space missions.

Future Moon and Mars colonists will already be facing a life underground, to hide from the surface radiation, micrometeorite bombardment, extreme temperatures and to create a usable atmosphere. These natural tunnels will save them the hard work of needing to dig the tunnel. The natural roofs on these caverns are thought to be 10 meters or more thick, with one site estimated to have a roof that’s 45-90 meters thick. This would be more than enough to protect against solar radiation and galactic cosmic radiation. While the surface of the Moon varies in temperature from -180 C to +100 C,...

It's in its early stages, but the idea is to replace modern rovers — which are slow, bulky and very expensive — with swarms of sensor-studded, fast-moving micro-bots that can cover much more ground at a relatively low cost. Literally called Marsbees, the little bots are "flapping wing flyers of a bumblebee size with cicada-sized wings," NASA officials wrote. The planet has just one-third of Earth's gravitational pull, offering the Marsbees an advantage despite the thin atmosphere. Flapping-wing bots are pretty uncommon on Earth, the NASA statement noted, because rotary-wing bots like quadcopters are much more popular. But the flapping-wing design allows the team...

The trailer sets up the film's focus on Armstrong, his years as a research test pilot and then as an astronaut, building up to what the movie's tagline describes as the "impossible journey to the moon." In July 1969, Armstrong commanded Apollo 11, NASA's first mission to land humans on the moon. The two-minute teaser provides quick glimpses of Armstrong (Gosling) piloting the X-15 rocket plane and as command pilot for his first spaceflight, Gemini 8 in 1966. The trailer also includes scenes based on Armstrong's private life, in particular his relationship with his first wife Janet, played by Claire...

“This is a good example of regulatory capture -- when the people being regulated win over their supervisor to their viewpoint. It happens all the time. He looks a bit of a Shlemiel anyway so was probably not hard to capture Another reason why he was quickly captured probably is that he knows nothing about science. In justifying himself, Bridenstine referred to "The Science" as having convinced him. Whenever anybody talks vaguely about "The Science" as his justification for believing in global warming that is a sure sign that he in fact knows nothing about the issues involved. He is...

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has been on the Red Planet for a long, long time. Back in March it tallied its 2,000th Martian day, which is 2,054 Earth days, and despite some drilling woes that have since been solved, the plucky little rover is still cruising along and conducting experiments in the name of science. Now, just days after NASA revealed that its new drilling technique works as planned, the agency is calling for a press conference to reveal something special. As always, the group is tight-lipped about what it has in store, but it will be holding its event...

June 3, 2018 — A Russian spacecraft carrying three crew members home from a five month stay on the International Space Station returned to Earth on Sunday (June 3). Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, Norishige "Neemo" Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and astronaut Scott "Maker" Tingle of NASA touched down aboard Russia's Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft on the steppe of Kazakhstan. Descending under a parachute, the gumdrop-shape capsule was further slowed by braking thrusters and landed southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8:39 a.m. EDT (1239 GMT or 6:39 p.m. local Kazakh time). "That was a good ride!"...

Nasa’s output of climate change information aimed at the public has dwindled under the Trump administration, with a former employee claiming “fear and anxiety” within the agency has led to an online retreat from the issue. Laura Tenenbaum, a former science communicator for Nasa, said she was warned off using the term “global warming” on social media and restricted in speaking to the media due to her focus on climate change. “Nasa’s talking point is that it’s business as usual, but that’s not true,” said Tenenbaum, who departed Nasa in October after a decade at the space agency. “They have...

The recently anointed richest person in the world, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, says we need to colonize the moon — and time is of the essence. ..." Speaking at the Space Development Conference in Los Angeles over the weekend, Mr Bezos made the argument that in order to protect Earth and allow the human species to continue growing, we need to move much of our industrial activity to the moon, or even asteroids. The 54-year-old billionaire said moving heavy industry into solar-powered space outposts is the only way to ensure that our planet can cope with the rising...

Mars will be a hard place to raise the children necessary to sustain a permanent colony there. And according to a new paper published in the June issue of the journal Futures, conceiving kids on Mars will be even harder. ... The biological challenges of rearing Mars babies are easy enough to wrap one's head around. For starters, Mars' atmosphere is about 1 percent as thick as Earth's, meaning the planet is hit by a lot more solar radiation than humans are currently used to. NASA studies have shown that radiation exposure might damage astronauts' brain cells and increase their...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon in 1969 during the Apollo 12 mission and commanded a crew on the Skylab space station in 1973, died in Houston on Saturday, federal officials said.

"A second section deals with commercial remote sensing regulatory reform. “The current regulatory system is woefully out of date and needs significant reform to ensure the United States remains the chosen jurisdiction for these high tech companies,” the fact sheet states. A related section calls on the Secretary of Commerce to provide a plan to create a “one-stop shop” within his department “for administering and regulating commercial space flight activities.” The Commerce Department had previously announced plans to combine the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs office with the Office of Space Commerce..." http://spacenews.com/new-policy-directive-implements-commercial-space-regulatory-reforms/ This appears to address regulatory issues that...

In a NASA town hall yesterday (May 17), NASA's new administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said that he knows Earth's climate is changing, and that humans contribute to it "in a major way," also supporting NASA's research into that important area. The statement is significant because Bridenstine has expressed doubt about human-caused climate change in the past, causing some to question his suitability to lead a fact-focused NASA. In 2013, as an Oklahoma congressman, Bridenstine claimed there was no current trend toward global warming. More recently, such as in his NASA administrator confirmation hearings last November, he has acknowledged that human activity...

President Trump plans to cut off funding to the International Space Station by 2025.  Many people do not even know there is an International Space Station, because it is so rarely in the news, but it has cost more than $100 billion to build and support. What follows is a complete list of the most important discoveries of the space station over the past 20 years: ... ... ... The space station is another example of welfare for NASA.  It provides nothing to America, using taxpayer money to provide welfare for scientists and engineers to be tremendously unproductive. NASA scientists see it differently.  That's...

A tiny satellite on its way to Mars has opened its eyes and captured a view of home. One of NASA's two Mars Cube One (MarCO) cubesats, which launched toward the Red Planet along with the agency's InSight lander on May 5, took a photo on May 9 to help confirm that its high-gain antenna had deployed properly. The antenna is in the photo. And so are the moon and Earth, the latter of which appears as a pale blue dot, just as it did in a famous photo taken by NASA's Voyager 1 probe in 1990. ..." (snip) Despite...

One month after its launch, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has sent back an initial test image that shows more than 200,000 stars in the southern sky. TESS’ image was taken by one of its cameras with a two-second exposure. The picture is centered on the constellation Centaurus, with the edge of the dark Coalsack Nebula at upper right and the star Beta Centauri prominent along the lower edge. The picture provides only a hint of what TESS will be seeing once it starts delivering science-quality images next month. When all four wide-field cameras are in operation, TESS’ images...

On Monday, a cargo delivery to the International Space Station will carry old-fashioned sextants, E. colibacteria and lasers that will create a temperature 10 billion times colder than the vacuum of space. … CAL is sending the space station an experimental physics package that holds an "ice chest"-like compartment filled with lasers and electronics; the interior will be able to reach a temperature10 billion times colder than the vacuum of space, according to a NASA statement. Within this instrument, the researchers will use laser cooling techniques and magnets to slow down atoms until they are almost entirely motionless. By studying...

On the Saturday afternoon of July 4, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission leader Alan Stern was in his office near the project Mission Control Center, working, when his cell phone rang. He was aware of the Independence Day holiday but was much more focused on the fact that the date was “Pluto flyby minus 10 days.”... Glancing at his ringing phone, Alan was surprised to see the caller was Glen Fountain, the longtime project manager of New Horizons. He felt a chill because he knew that Glen was taking time off for the holiday, at his nearby home, before...