November 20th, 2020
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As part of the European Space Agency’s Moon Village initiative, a lunar community study has been carried out by architecture, interior design, engineering and urban planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). The detailed village design was done in collaboration with ESA and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the Massachusetts Institute of […]
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) made a tough, difficult decision to move forward on a “controlled decommissioning” of the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Two recent and unexpected cable failures and consultations with multiple engineering experts led to the verdict of demolishing the Big Dish. Arecibo has pioneered a number of discoveries such as […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2946 tasks. Reports Mark Salvatore, a planetary geologist at the University of Michigan, Curiosity will be staying busy as the team continues to investigate the topographic “benches” as the robot moves from the Glen Torridon region uphill towards the sulfate-bearing unit. “Last week, Curiosity was positioned at […]
If all stays on track, the DNA of Arthur Clarke, the gifted visionary writer, will be placed on Earth’s moon next year. That’s also the fictional home of an alien monolith as detailed by Clarke in his Space Odyssey series and rendered into visual manifestation by film maker Stanley Kubrick in the epic […]
China’s Chang’e-5 sample return mission to the Moon moved closer to launch with the rollout to the pad of its Long March-5 booster. On Tuesday, the launcher was vertically transported to the launch area at Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China’s Hainan Province. The carrier rocket, coded as Long March-5 Y5, is planned to […]
The UK Government is investigating the potential of large solar power satellites to collect solar energy, convert it into high frequency radio waves, and safely beam it back to ground-based receivers connected to the electrical power grid. The report has been commissioned jointly by the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and Department for Business, Energy and […]
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has suffered loss of cables in August and this month that supports the facility’s 900-ton platform. “Each of the structure’s remaining cables is now supporting more weight than before, increasing the likelihood of another cable failure, which would likely result in the collapse of the entire structure,” explains […]
Tonight I’ll be the guest of Host Dave Scott on Spaced Out Radio. The show begins on Thursday, November 12th starting at 9 pm Pacific time, Midnight Eastern time. Here are the places you can follow the show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpacedOutRadio (Use #SpacedOutRadio during show for live chat) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davescottsor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpacedOutRadioShow Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/spaced-out-radio […]
Another sobering report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has been released today. A report focused on NASA’s Top Management and Performance Challenges takes an in-depth look at several key challenges the agency faces. Top challenges Challenge 1: Landing the First Woman and the Next Man on the Moon by 2024 Challenge 2: […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2940 tasks. Curiosity is now parked in front of a beautiful “bench” outcrop, reports Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The benches in this area are raised relative to the nearby surroundings, indicating that they are more resistant to erosion than the […]
