Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 881
Oct 12, 2017
A European Astronomical Observatory is Announcing an “Unprecedented Discovery”
Posted by Ian Hale in category: space
Oct 10, 2017
Massive Chinese Telescope Discovers Two Pulsars While Still in Trial Stage
Posted by Dan Kummer in category: space
After one year of trial operations, China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), a 30-football-field-large radio telescope that is currently the world’s largest, recently discovered two pulsars 16,000 and 4,100 light years from Earth, respectively.
Pulsars are magnetized and rotating collapsed stars that emit electromagnetic beams. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) confirmed Tuesday that the new pulsars J1859-01 and J1931-01 were discovered on August 22 and 25 while the telescope was scanning the southern galactic plane. Australia’s Parkes radio telescope confirmed the discovery in September, state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
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Planetary Resources’ Exploration Mission.
Planetary Resources is embarking on the world’s first commercial deep space exploration mission. The purpose is to identify and unlock the critical water resources necessary for human expansion in space.
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Oct 6, 2017
Scientists Just Found Water on Mars Where They Thought None Could Exist
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: futurism, space
Astronomers re-examined data from NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft and found evidence of water from a region in the Martian equator. While the discovery is surprising, it’s definitely a welcome one. Water on Mars can help future exploration missions.
It’s long been known that Mars had large bodies of water some millions of years ago. Traces of these ancient Martian lakes and oceans have been found in recent years, thanks to information provided by probes and landers, like NASA’s Curiosity rover and the Odyssey spacecraft that currently orbits the red planet. Now, a team of astronomers from the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University found large deposits of what could be permafrost ice in the most unlikeliest of places on the Martian surface.
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Oct 5, 2017
Pence Pledges the U.S. Will Go to the Moon, Mars and Beyond
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: government, military, policy, satellites, space
Washington (AP) — Seated before the grounded space shuttle Discovery, a constellation of Trump administration officials used soaring rhetoric to vow to send Americans back to the moon and then on to Mars.
After voicing celestial aspirations, top officials moved to what National Intelligence Director Dan Coats called “a dark side” to space policy. Coats, Vice President Mike Pence, other top officials and outside space experts said the United States has to counter and perhaps match potential enemies’ ability to target U.S. satellites.
Pence, several cabinet secretaries and White House advisers gathered in the shadow of the shuttle at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to chart a new path in space — government, commercial and military — for the country. It was the first meeting of the National Space Council, revived after it was disbanded in 1993.
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Oct 5, 2017
New space race to Mars pits NASA vs. SpaceX
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: Elon Musk, policy, space, space travel
Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s announcement last week accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA’s efforts to reach the same goal.
With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA — while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds — a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy.
Read: Before Elon Musk can get SpaceX to Mars, he must overcome these nontechnical hurdles.
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Sep 30, 2017
Australia Is Establishing a National Space Agency After Years of Pressure
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: government, space
Sep 30, 2017
Former Google Employee Engineering His Own A.I. Religion
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: engineering, robotics/AI, space, transhumanism, transportation
More on this #transhumanism AI religion story, w/ some of my quotes in it. This article has 5500 comments on it!
Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski is emerging from the shadow of a self-driving lawsuit to create a robot god.
The present continues to take inspiration from science-fiction author Isaac Asimov’s visions of the future. In “The Last Question,” Asimov conceived of an artificial intelligence project known as Multivac. Its purpose was to solve for the inevitable heat death of the universe, but in the end, it becomes that answer.
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Sep 28, 2017
Pluto’s Gargantuan Glacial “Skyscrapers” Reveal Their Secrets
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: climatology, space
The jagged geological ridges, found at the highest elevations located close to Pluto’s equator, soar hundreds of feet into the sky and are as high as some of the tallest skyscrapers on Earth.
According to an article in the latest issue of planetary science journal, Icarus, the colossal “ice-scrapers” observed on Pluto’s surface are vestiges from the last Ice Age that occurred on the dwarf planet millions of years ago.
Scientists believe that the “ice blades” are the result of solid methane evaporation that formed the towers of ice on the mountain peaks along Chile’s Chajnantor plain.
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