Hasta La Gadget!

Over 200,000 would-be space explorers applied for the first round of Mars One‘s Astronaut Selection Program, though there’s still several years – and a few more screenings – before the mission goes ahead. Not-for-profit Mars One opened up for applications earlier this year, offering the chance of a one-way trip from Earth to the red […]

IRAS 20324+4057 is a mouthful, and it’s about 4,500 light years away, but it’s also a star on the move. It’s expanding to form a new star, but it’s unclear how massive that new star will be. "Energetic" wind and light is displacing a lot of the gas and dust that would normally go into the "protostar." Depending on how the play between light and gravity resolves (over the next 100,000 years), the star could expand out and eventually develop into a planetary nebula, or could pull matter in and become a massive star. The protostellar nebula is about one light year across. It was imaged by Hubble in 2006, but the photo above was only released recently. Though it’s unclear what will happen, NASA wants to start making predictions using "clever observations and deductions." We can all play a little stellar guessing game. [Astronomy Picture of the Day]

Read more…

In the predawn hours of August 28, a NASA video network consisting of five cameras located in the southeast United States recorded a massive fireball. The fireball was a meteor that entered the atmosphere of Earth over the Georgia/Tennessee border at 3:27 AM, moving at a speed of 56,000 mph.

NASA reports that the meteor begin to break apart the skies northeast of Ocoee, Tennessee at an altitude of 33 miles. By the time NASA lost track of the meteor, it had descended to an altitude of 21 miles and slowed to speed of only 19,400 mph. NASA estimates of the rock was about two-feet wide and weighed over 100 pounds.

Even cooler than the gigantic fireball streaking through the Earth’s atmosphere and getting caught on video is the fact that it briefly outshined the moon. Doppler weather radar in the area also reported a rain of meteor fragments falling to the ground east of Cleveland, Tennessee.

I wonder how long before we see this on an episode of Meteorite Men.

[via Space.com]

We’ve been suckers for space travel around here for a long time. My secret goal is to one day make enough money to afford a ticket aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two. Unfortunately, tickets for suborbital flights are insanely expensive, but it would be so cool to take one of those flights.

Before anyone can climb on board the SS2 and head into orbit, the aircraft has to pass a number of flight tests. Virgin Galactic recently conducted another flight test in which SS2 was able to reach an altitude of 69,000 feet and a speed of Mach 1.43. SS2′s previous best was 55,000 feet and Mach 1.2.

The test flight happened at 8 AM local time in the California Mojave Desert this past Thursday. This marks the second time SS2 has had a successful supersonic flight using its rocket engine. The latest flight saw the hybrid rocket engine burn for 20 seconds, twice the time it was powered up during the first flight.

[via C|NET]

It’s always interesting when meteors streaked through the atmosphere of the earth creating fiery trails that those of us on Earth can see with the naked eye. These fireballs are relatively rare since most go unseen. However, this week a spectacular fireball was recorded over the American South East and briefly it shine brighter than […]