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Soldiers from a Colorado National Guard space battalion who visited the Pentagon on Sept. 5 said they have no idea what role, if any, they would have in the Space Force that President Trump has proposed. But they did provide a glimpse into the daily grind of space warfare. When they are called up for duty, soldiers from the 117th Space Battalion go to war zones to help commanders on the ground get what they need from space: satellite imagery, weather analysis, early warning of a missile launch, communications and navigation. A space team includes six soldiers — two officers...

When American astronaut Neil Armstrong, a devout Christian, visited Israel after his trip to the moon, he was taken on a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem by Israeli archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov. When they got to the Hulda Gate, which is at the top of the stairs leading to the Temple Mount, Armstrong asked Ben-Dov whether Jesus had stepped anywhere around there. “I told him, ‘Look, Jesus was a Jew,'” recalled Ben-Dov. “These are the steps that lead to the Temple, so he must have walked here many times.” Armstrong then asked if these were the original steps, and...

Buzz Aldrin appeared to criticize Neil Armstrong biopic First Man for leaving out the planting of the American flag on the Moon. The 88-year-old, who was the second man to set foot on the Moon, on Sunday tweeted a picture of the flag planted after their landing in 1969. He captioned the photo: 'Proud to be an American.' Aldrin also re-tweeted a photo of him saluting next to the same picture. It is an apparent dig at Oscar-winning director Damian Chazelle's decision not to include the planting of the flag on the Moon at the end of his critically acclaimed...

by Jeff Foust — August 30, 2018 Soyuz MS-09 The ISS crew traced the leak to a small hole in the orbital module, the top section of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. Credit: NASA WASHINGTON — As the crew of the International Space Station worked Aug. 30 to fix, at least temporarily, a minor air leak, the incident illustrated the growing orbital debris risk to the outpost and strains in American and Russian approaches to ISS operations. NASA, in a statement early Aug. 30, said that controllers first noticed a minor drop in air pressure within the station at around 7...

Most U.S. reconnaissance craft are purpose-built monoliths that operate in geostationary orbit, about 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) above Earth. Though these singletons are extremely capable, they're expensive, typically costing $1 billion or more to build, launch and operate. And it takes a decade or so to develop each one, said Paul "Rusty" Thomas, of the Tactical Technology Office at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The nation's current spy satellites, therefore, aren't terribly responsive to new technologies and new developments, and they represent "big, fat, juicy targets" to adversaries, Thomas said last week during a presentation with NASA's...

Boston - It was a normal Friday morning in the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. Adults were on their way to work, and children were in school. But that ordinary day was about to become extraordinary. Suddenly, a fireball shot across the clear morning sky leaving a thick trail of smoke, accompanied by the sound of a huge explosion. The shock wave knocked people over, shattered glass, and collapsed a factory roof. As many as 1,200 people were injured. A global network of infrasound sensors designed to pick up nuclear explosions calculated that the boom was 30 to 40 times...

Vice President Mike Pence said that the U.S. has more military satellites than any other country. Verdict: True The U.S. has 166 military satellites, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Russia and China have the next largest constellations at 89 and 84 military satellites, respectively.

It's been nearly a century since scientists first theorized that the Universe was expanding, and that the farther away a galaxy was from us, the faster it appears to recede. This isn't because galaxies are physically moving away from us, but rather because the Universe is full of gravitationally-bound objects, and the fabric of space that those objects reside in is expanding. But this picture, which held sway from the 1920s onward, has been recently revised. It's been only 20 years since we first realized that this expansion was speeding up, and that as time goes on, individual galaxies will...

“Deep Space of the Cosmos” –There’s a Mysterious Energy Latent In It Which Can Tell Us About Our Fate  Posted on Aug 15, 2018 “Empty space seems to be nothing to us. By analogy, water may seem to be nothing to a fish – it’s what’s left when you take away all the other things floating in the sea. Likewise, empty space is conjectured to be quite complicated,” Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge.Philosophers have debated the nature of “nothing” for thousands of years, but what has modern science got...

India will send a manned flight into space by 2022, premier Narendra Modi pledged during his annual 'Independence Day' speech. If the country successfully completes the flight, it will become the fourth country to ever achieve the feat, following in the footsteps of Russia, United States and China. India has yet to select the astronauts that will travel aboard the ship, but confirmed the cosmonauts could be men or women. Active since the 1960s, India's space programme has launched scores of satellites for itself and other countries, including a satellite that now orbits Mars.

The idea that the U.S. is going to expand its might beyond the globe is a problem for people who believe we live on a disc. President Donald Trump wants a Space Force to expand U.S. military power beyond the globe. That’s a problem for flat earthers who incorrectly believe the world is a flat disc floating through space. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence announced plans to launch “Space Force,” a sixth branch of the U.S. military by 2020. The proposed branch would be reserved specifically for outer space operations. Military experts say the Air Force currently carries out...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Pentagon's top engineer criticized Russia and China this week for militarizing space, a move the Trump administration wants to address with the formation of a sixth service branch dubbed Space Force. His remarks came a day before Vice President Mike Pence laid out President Donald Trump's vision for creating the Space Force by 2020. "We are not the people who choose to weaponize space, but if we are challenged we will respond," Dr. Michael Griffin said Wednesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala. "The Defense Department is today working on a means...

Space ForcePresident Donald Trump is asking supporters to vote on a logo for the "Space Force," a new military branch he's asked the Pentagon to establish. Twitter * President Donald Trump's campaign sent an email to supporters with potential logos for the "Space Force," a new military branch the president has instructed the Pentagon to establish. * Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday outlined the administration's plan for moving forward with the Space Force, including specifics on instructions given to the Pentagon. * Lawmakers and senior military officials aren't as enthusiastic about the proposed "Space Force" as the White House....

USSF: The newest branch of the U.S. military, the United States Space Force, became a reality on Thursday with an announcement by Vice President Mike Pence to an audience at the Pentagon. U.S.S.F. becomes the sixth military branch of service, the first one created since the U.S. Army Air Corps became the Air Force shortly after World War II. “The time has come to establish the United States Space Force,” Pence announced, noting that during the last great war, America rose to meet substantial military challenges posed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Part of meeting — and defeating —...

Seth Shostak from SETI.org joined the Chris Pryor Show. Seth discussed current scientific attempts to discover intelligent life and the mechanisms involved in this search. Seth has a fantastic radio show of his own, Big Picture Science and it can be found here https://seti.org/education-outreach/big-picture-science-overview

The NASA manager overseeing development of Boeing and SpaceX’s commercial crew ferry ships says the space agency has approved SpaceX’s proposal to strap in astronauts atop Falcon 9 rockets, then fuel the launchers in the final hour of the countdown as the company does for its uncrewed missions. The “load-and-go” procedure has become standard for SpaceX’s satellite launches, in which an automatic countdown sequencer commands chilled kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen to flow into the Falcon 9 rocket in the final minutes before liftoff. “From a program standpoint, we went throgh a pretty extensive process where we laid out the...

Vice President Mike Pence is expected to give a speech at the Pentagon Thursday where he will outline the next steps in forming the Space Force as the fifth branch of the military. “JUST IN: VP Pence will deliver a speech Thursday at the Pentagon about next steps in the formation of the Space Force,” a CNN correspondent reported Tuesday. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the Defense Department, Pence, and the White House are in “complete agreement” in the creation of a new Space Force.

SOLAR MINIMUM DEEPENS: The sun has been without sunspots for 32 of the past 33 days. To find a similar stretch of blank suns, you have to go back to 2009 when the sun was experiencing the deepest solar minimum in a century. Solar minimum has returned, bringing extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun's atmosphere, and strangely pink auroras. ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION UPDATE: As the sunspot cycle declines, we expect cosmic rays to increase. Is this actually happening? The answer is "yes." Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have been monitoring cosmic radiation in the atmosphere...

NASA shared photos of the capsule's transfer to the White House lawn in a tweet July 21. The display was part of the Made in America showcase, an annual product display launched by President Donald Trump to highlight American manufacturing. The capsule earned its place thanks to its production by Lockheed Martin in 2011 and 2012 using parts manufactured by more than a thousand companies based in the U.S., NASA officials wrote. This specific Orion capsule is the only one to have flown so far, during a test flight on Dec. 5, 2014, according another NASA tweet about the display....

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