In November 2014, after traveling 10 years and hundreds of millions of miles, a European spacecraft will touch down on a two-and-a-half-mile-wide ball of ice and dust as it hurtles through space towards the sun. And if all goes according to plan, this unprecedented feat could finally give us what we need to understand the origins of life on Earth. It’s just the "according to plan" that’s the tricky part.
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The city of Boca do Acre is a beautiful place to live, almost completely covered by the Amazon Rainforest—for now. Because you shouldn’t be fooled by the pretty colors in this image: it actually reveals the rapid rate of deforestation in the area.
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Sky watchers around the world were disappointed yesterday when early reports coming from the European Space Agency and others declared that the comet ISON hadn’t survived its close brush with the sun. That meant that the hopes of a comet so bright it was visible in the day were dashed for sky watchers the world […]
From its launch in 2009, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory was a busy little satellite. Over its lifetime it made over 37, 000 scientific observations—and this video shows them all, condensed into less than one minute.
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At the start of this week, the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite (GOCE) fell to Earth
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The GOCE satellite we reported to be falling to Earth has finally succumbed to gravity entirely, breaking up into dozens of remnants weighing 20-25% of its original one ton, reports the BBC. It didn’t strike any populated areas as it showered down this Sunday afternoon. Interestingly, the extremely low-orbiting observation satellite was designed in 2009 […]
The European Space Agency has been collecting examples of "spacecraft-associated biology" in a small collection housed at the Leibniz-Institut DSMZ in Brunswick, Germany. 298 strains of "extremotolerant" bacteria, isolated from spacecraft-assembly rooms because they managed to survive the incredible methods used to clean spacecraft, are now being studied for their biological insight. How on earth can they still be alive?
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In order to prepare for the human exploration of the furthest reaches of our solar system, space agencies often run experiments to see how our bodies can cope with long periods of sedentary behavior. And my, it looks boring.
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While NASA’s asteroid-capturing mission remains grounded from a lack of Congressional funding, a similar and equally ambitious ESA program is nearing fruition. In the coming months, the Rosetta spacecraft and its integrated Philae probe will become the first manmade objects to not only orbit an asteroid but land on it as well. Here’s how they’ll do it.
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These images show the incredibly striking, scarred surface of Mars. Formed by huge tectonic forces, its canyons are an enduring reminder of stress and strain the red planet has undergone.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
