February 22nd, 2020
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Eight Years to the Moon – The History of the Apollo Missions by Nancy Atkinson, Page Street Publishing Company; July 2019; Hardback; 240 pages, $35.00 There was a literary landslide of books tied to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. But author Nancy Atkinson has written a truly impressive, behind-the-scenes look […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2682 tasks. Curiosity has kicked off her fifth Mars Year, reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland. The robot had a successful and busy schedule last weekend, operating both the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis […]
Strategies to explore for present life on Mars are blossoming as researchers are actively doubling-down in furthering the search for extant life on the Red Planet. And for good reason: New research approaches, including improved knowledge of Mars’ geologic diversity and history, better appreciation of life in extreme environments here on Earth, and […]
Research using an artificial neural network has shown that some asteroids that are now thought not dangerous can impact the Earth in the future. Astronomers at Leiden University in The Netherlands have used a supercomputer, integrating the orbits of the Sun and its planets forward in time for 10,000 years. They then traced the […]
On the farside of the Moon, China’s Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover have resumed work for the 15th lunar after “sleeping” during the extremely cold night. According to the Xinhua News Agency the lander woke up at 6:57 a.m. Tuesday (Beijing time), and the rover at 5:55 p.m. Monday. Reportedly, both are in normal working […]
In the event you’re off-planet and haven’t caught the latest Earth-based bio-hazard news. A new virus called the 2019 novel Coronavirus is the cause of the outbreak that started in China and is spreading worldwide. Relatively little is known about the virus so far, also called COVID-19. For now, there isn’t much known about this […]
An update on that troubled Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) experiment deployed by NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. The “mole” is part of the HP3 and has only managed to partially bury itself since it started hammering in February 2019. “Mars (and the mole) continue to make our lives…how should I say…interesting,” explains […]
Drilling on Mars! It’s so super cool SAM bakes up our sample Using many a joule NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2677 tasks. The Curiosity science team is currently analyzing our most recent drill powder from “Hutton,” reports Dawn Sumner, Planetary Geologist at University of California Davis. The first analysis of its […]
An expert on international relations has taken on the taboo in modern society of taking UFOs seriously and calls for systematic science to try to determine what they are. Alexander Wendt is the Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security and professor of political science at The Ohio State University. Before coming to […]
Since China’s newly-developed Long March-5B arrived at its launch site on February 5, preparations are in full swing for its inaugural April liftoff. The booster will be topped by the prototype of China’s new manned spaceship. It will be unpiloted. The Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China is the busy site for tests and […]
