Hasta La Gadget!

Planetary Resources really wants to mine asteroids for valuable materials, but first it has to find them. So the company is partnering with NASA on a crowdsourcing project that would put the American public to work identifying and tracking near-Earth-objects (NEOs). All the data generated will be open sourced and made publicly available on the web. The effort will center on a series of challenges and contests designed to lure in citizen scientists and the results will be reviewed by Planetary Resources. Obviously, the company will be looking for mineable hunks of space rock, but it will also be giving back to the scientific community by using the data it collects to improve algorithms for detecting asteroids. And, obviously, the more of those we’re able to detect and track, the less likely we are to be caught off guard by a meteorite apocalypse. To be notified when the program kicks off, sign up for more info at the Planetary Resources site.

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Source: Planetary Resources

China has a robotic moon lander that will land on the surface of the moon next month. Chinese scientists are in the final stages of preparing the Chang’e 3 lander to launch. The lander will lift off atop a Chinese Long March 3B rocket that is set for launch in early December. The Chinese lander […]

Space is a very hazardous place. It’s either very hot, or very cold and has lots of radiation that can kill humans. These factors pose significant risks to astronauts traveling into space. NASA has been using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for a number of tasks, including studying deep-space radiation. The LRO has helped scientist to […]

NASA’s Mars orbiter MAVEN launched successfully today from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 1:28PM EST. Once it arrives in orbit around the Red Planet, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter will gather data about Mars’ upper atmosphere to try and discover how exactly the planet got to be so dry and atmosphere-poor. Earlier probes suggest […]

What are the clouds of Mars made of? That’s the question that’ll be answered when NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) probe reaches our neighbor. Before that can happen, however, it needs to leave home on its long journey, which is scheduled to commence around 1:30pm ET today. The stream kicks off from 11:00, showing the preparations live from Cape Canaveral, so if you’re interested in watching what goes down, or, more appropriately, what goes up, head past the break and grab some popcorn.

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Via: Space.com

Source: NASA