astroengine writes "When considering the fuel source for a fusion-powered interstellar probe, wouldn't it be a good idea to set up a colony on the moon and start pillaging the lunar surface for its helium-3 riches? Not so fast, says ...

Plammox writes "Last year, non-profit, volunteer-based Copenhagen Suborbitals failed at launching what they call the world's largest amateur rocket, because of a frozen LOX-valve. This year, the sea launch platform 'Sputnik' has become self-propelled, eliminating the need for their home-built ...

gabbo529 writes "Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have created a map of the universe called the 2MASS Redshift Survey. The astronomers put in 10 laborious years in creating the map and it is what they call the ...

eldavojohn writes "Some soon-to-be-published research on gyrochronology has yielded a possible method for more accurately determining a star's age. While determining the age of stars in clusters has been done using the patterns of its color and brightness, singular stars ...

gbjbaanb writes "A revolutionary UK spaceplane concept has been boosted by the conclusions of an important technical review. Skylon is a design for a spaceplane that uses engines that work as normal jets near the ground and switch to rocket ...

An anonymous reader sends in a brief writeup about a massive storm that's been visible on Saturn's surface for a few months now. "As it rapidly expanded, the storm's core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) ...

sciencehabit writes "Our galaxy could be teeming with 'homeless' planets, wandering the cosmos far from the solar systems of their birth, astronomers have found. In a paper published online today in Nature, the researchers list 10 objects in our galaxy ...

katarn writes "Nick Risinger traveled the world, using a robotic camera mount and six air-cooled cameras, each fitted with their own lenses and filters, to capture the entire night sky in one image; the largest full true-color sky survey. The ...

astroengine writes "According to a new publication, NASA's Kepler exoplanet hunting space telescope may soon start discovering Saturn-like ringed alien worlds. So far, none have been positively identified, as Kepler has only detected exoplanets orbiting close to their parent stars; ...

coondoggie writes "The US Air Force is preparing to take a long look at how commercial space technology can help it better operate in the cosmos. The Air Force today said it will host a space test program meeting next ...

astroengine writes "In 1997, comet Hale-Bopp became the most spectacular space event of the past few decades. But where's the huge lump of ice now? Astronomers have decided to check in on the interplanetary interloper to see how its journey ...

RedEaredSlider writes "China unveiled plans for its own space station, to be completed by 2020, along with a cargo ship to ferry supplies to and from orbit. The fact that the country is proposing one is a sign of the ...

Phoghat writes "In what is starting to become a familiar theme, researchers have speculated on what types of observational data from distant planetary systems might indicate the presence of an alien civilization. Potential indicators of the presence of an alien ...

olsmeister writes "Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans. Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of ...

olsmeister writes "Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans. Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of ...

hackingbear writes "Declining to speak for attribution, the Chinese officials from Great Wall Industry, a marketing arm of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CAST), say they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services ...

hackingbear writes "Back in March, China revealed it is studying the feasibility of designing the most powerful carrier rocket in history for making a manned moon landing and exploring deep space, according to Liang Xiaohong, vice head of the China ...

abednegoyulo writes "It surpasses Sotheby's own sale in 1996 of a more modern Russian Soyuz capsule for $1.6 million," Pearlman added. "That spacecraft, purchased by Ross Perot's foundation, is now on loan and displayed at the National Air and Space ...

coondoggie writes "You can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars or spaceships patrolling other planet in our solar system for that matter, a recently powered-up telescope built by the researchers at the Defense Advanced ...

DeviceGuru writes "The 50th anniversary of the first-ever manned space flight, by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, is being celebrated on April 12 with a two-day early activation of the ARISSat-1 ham radio satellite aboard the International Space Station. If ...

An anonymous reader writes "The clash of two titans — physics and chemistry — are major barriers to human space travel to Mars and beyond, and may well make it impossible ... at least with current technologies." ...

thodelu writes with news that astronomers recently got a look at what they believe is a star falling into a black hole. Phil Plait explains: "As the star approached this bottomless pit, the side of the star facing the black hole ...

arshadk writes with this excerpt from Wired's Danger Room: "The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the 29-foot unmanned craft — a kind of miniature Space Shuttle — for NASA. Then, ...

adeelarshad82 writes "NASA released an image of Mercury captured by its Messenger spacecraft — the first ever obtained from the planet's orbit. The first image came in at 5:20am Eastern yesterday, and over the next six hours, Messenger captured an ...

​Stephen Colbert is a nerd's nerd, having played D&D as a kid and developed an impressive knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, among other things. As an alumnus of Second City, Strangers with Candy, and The Daily Show with Jon ...

astroengine writes "According to two theoretical physicists, our current four-dimensional Universe (3 dimensions of space, 1 dimension of time) is actually an evolution from a lower-dimensional state. The early Universe may have existed with just one spatial dimension (plus one ...

There's a full moon Saturday and it's gonna appear the largest it has in almost 20 years, and won't happen again until 2029. So yeah, probably a good idea to give it a peep just in case shit hits ...

astroengine writes "The Keck II infrared telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has spotted what appears to be the coldest brown dwarf ever detected. Astronomers from the University of Hawaii have managed to constrain its temperature to just shy of 100 ...

audiovideodisco writes "Last month, the team behind NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planetary candidate ever spotted: KOI 326.01, an approximately Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. There was much excitement; ...

seagirlreed writes "Pairs of stars could be connected via wormholes filled with 'phantom matter,' according to Kyrgyz researchers. If a wormhole exists within a star, the stellar body may exhibit measurable properties astronomers might detect. Although interesting, other scientists are ...

An anonymous reader writes "NASA scientist Dr. Richard Hoover claims he discovered evidence of extraterritorial life in a meteorite. He published his results in the March issue of Journal of Cosmology. In front of the article there is an official ...

Hrey whas this brutton do? Space beer, not to be confused with beer made with ingredients grown in space, is beer designed to be consumed in space by future space-tourists. Why does space deserve it's own beer? I dunno, ...

An anonymous reader writes "Next month, the first space probe in nearly 40 years will approach the planet Mercury, with an array of instruments that could help answer fundamental questions about how planets form. The mission is called MESSENGER, for ...

It is very easy to fall asleep in space. When you're at your desk at home and you've been working ...

dweezil-n0xad writes "Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster ...