Future spaceships powered by black holes and dark matter
Source: Telegraph
Spaceships powered by black holes or dark matter may be the future of stellar exploration. The radical proposals, put forward by physicists in two American universities, are hoped to make visits to other stars in our galaxy plausible.
In Search of a Real Spaceship: Buzz Aldrin
Source: The Huffington Post
Space capsules? That's right, instead of following the Shuttles with something as capable - something that can guarantee American space leadership - we're going to race China, India, and Russia in a competition to build a limited and ungainly spacecraft that America retired a gen …
Extraterrestrial rafting: Hunting off-world sea life
Source: newscientist.com
IF LIFE is to be found beyond our home planet, then our closest encounters with it may come in the dark abyss of some extraterrestrial sea. For Earth is certainly not the only ocean-girdled world in our solar system.
Mars Society Statement Regarding Augustine Commission Report
Source: Mars Society
Americans want and deserve a space program that is actually going somewhere and is worth the risk and monetary costs. In order for that to happen, a radically different methodology to that being accepted by the Augustine Commission must be employed.
Saturn at equinox - The Big Picture
Source: The Boston Globe
Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox.
Jupiter Moon's Ocean Could Be Rich in Oxygen
Source: Wired News
Researchers hunting for signs of life beyond Earth have long been drawn to Europa because several features of the moon's icy surface — including its bright color, networks of long fractures and crater-free terrain — suggest that the moon contains a vast ocean buried under t …
Fly me to Mars. One-way
Source: mg.co.za
Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.
NASA Tests 5-Segment Solid Rocket Motor For Ares I First Stage
Source: The Spacearium
PROMONTORY, UT - NASA and industry engineers lit up the Utah sky Thursday with the initial full-scale, full-duration test firing of the first stage motor for the Ares I rocket. The Ares I is a crew launch vehicle in development for NASA's Constellation Program.
Atlas Rocket Launches Secret Communications Satellite
Source: The Spacearium
CAPE CANAVERAL, AFS - A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket successfully launched the top-secret PAN satellite at 5:35 p.m. EDT, today from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral. The Atlas V rocket carried a U.S.
In 1961, the Cold War raged, and for a confrontation that didn't involve combat or military assault it was pretty damned scary.
A One-Way Ticket to Mars
Source: The New York Times
The largest stumbling block to a consideration of one-way missions is probably political. NASA and Congress are unlikely to do something that could be perceived as signing the death warrants of astronauts.
Shuttle Discovery Celebtrates 25th Anniversary With Spectacular Night Launch
Source: The Spacearium
(With Video) KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL - Racing to orbit atop a manmade Sun through the midnight skies above Florida last night, space shuttle Discovery finally blasted off on a mission to deliver new science equipment and a now-famous treadmill to the International Space Station …
Is the Ares I rocket program dead?
Source: The Houston Chronicle
NASA has spent four years developing its next rocket, the Ares I, and is due to perform its first real test of the new system at the end of October. (For more background about Ares I and the Constellation program, see my recent interview with program manager Jeff Hanley).
Comet find boosts hope for alien life
Source: Skymania News
NASA scientists have found compelling new evidence that life may be common in the universe and not just special to Earth. They discovered one of the basic building blocks of life in samples of a comet that a spacecraft brought back to Earth.
Bring Back NASA's Crazy Idea Factory
Source: Wired News
For just less than a decade, NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts was the staid space agency's big-vision mashup of Willy Wonka's factory, DARPA and your crazy uncle's garage workshop. And now experts want to bring it back.