Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Tiny ‘Black Magic’ Satellite Packs Origami-Like Radar Dish

Nov 23
2016

A new NASA satellite packs an intricate radar dish in a tiny body.

Space starshade to better see exoplanets

Nov 19
2016

A flower-like starshade could give astronomers a direct look at planets orbiting distant stars. Cathal O’Connell explains how it would work.

Colonizing the Inner Solar System

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in space

Nov 19
2016

In this epic, 2-part episode, we team up with Isaac Arthur to imagine how humans will colonize the inner Solar System, becoming a true spacefaring civilization.

China’s Shenzhou 11 manned space capsule returns to Earth

Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in space

Nov 18
2016

BEIJING China’s Shenzhou 11 space capsule landed safely in the northern region of Inner Mongolia on Friday with two astronauts aboard, state media said, completing the country’s longest manned space mission to date.

China Central Television showed images of the craft — whose name translates as “Divine Vessel” — on the ground flanked by Chinese flags and support teams. State news agency Xinhua said the capsule had touched down “successfully” just after 2 p.m.

The two astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, spent 30 days aboard the Tiangong 2 space laboratory, or “Heavenly Palace 2”, which China is using to carry out experiments ahead of a longer-range plan to have a permanent manned space station around 2022.

Scientists Discovered a Mind-Boggling Chasm on Mercury

Posted by Sean Brazell in space

Nov 18
2016

Placed on Earth, it would stretch from Washington DC to New York to Detroit. Larger than the Grand Canyon, wider and deeper than East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Mercury’s newly-discovered “Great Valley” boggles the imagination. But it’s more than size that makes this geologic feature remarkable. The Great Valley may be our best evidence that Mercury’s entire crust is contracting.

Colonizing the Solar System, part 2: the Outer Solar System

Posted by Montie Adkins in engineering, environmental, habitats, space

Nov 17
2016

This is a nice vid but there are two things to note.

1. he does not mention Callisto in place of Europa. Europa gets enough radiation to kill you in a day where on Callisto you would not even get the radiation you get here on Earth.

2. It might be possible to puff up a given asteroid by creating a cylinder within as he points out, but filling it with water and then heating it from outside and once it’s molten the water will expand and blow the asteroid to a larger size. It may be possible to turn a 1 mile wide asteroid into a ten mile wide habitat. I do not know how well it scales up to larger asteroids.

Continue reading “Colonizing the Solar System, part 2: the Outer Solar System” | >

Project Blue: A Space Telescope to Find Another Earth — Project Blue | Kickstarter

Posted by Odette Bohr Dienel in science, space, space travel

Nov 16
2016

“Finding the first planet like Earth beyond our solar system would transform how we think about our place in the universe.”

Forget about the election for a minute: There’s a rare supermoon coming

Posted by Shane Hinshaw in space

Nov 11
2016

This could cause earthquakes because of the moons mass pulls of the mass of our planet.

There’s a rare supermoon coming this weekend, and no matter how devastated or thrilled you are by the latest election results, you don’t want to miss it.

In the wee hours of Sunday night and Monday morning, the moon will come closer to the Earth than it has in nearly 70 years.

Astronomers have designed a house for Mars — take a look inside

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in food, habitats, space

Nov 10
2016

Everyone from astronomers to tech companies wants to know what it would be like to live on Mars.

From growing vegetables in Martian soil, to claims that leaving Earth could save the human species, scientists are constantly making advances in this field.

Now, astronomers from the Royal Observatory in London and Stephen Petranek — author of “How We’ll Live on Mars” — have designed a Martian Show Home to demonstrate what life could be like on the Red Planet.

Scientists Have Found a Bizarre Similarity Between Human Cells and Neutron Stars

Posted by Sean Brazell in biotech/medical, space

Nov 8
2016

If you were to compare yourself to a neutron star, you probably wouldn’t find very many things in common. After all, neutron stars – celestial bodies with super strong magnetic fields – are made from collapsed star cores, lie light-years away from Earth, and don’t even watch Netflix.

But, according to new research, we share at least one similarity: the geometry of the matter that makes us.

Researchers have found that the ‘crust’ (or outer layers) of a neutron star has the same shape as our cellular membranes. This could mean that, despite being fundamentally different, both humans and neutron stars are constrained by the same geometry.