Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been hearing talks of the future formation of a colony on Mars, and it seems that space agencies and companies are quite adamant to get it going. In particular, a non-profit organization by the name of Mars One is planning to put four astronauts on Mars in 2023 to begin the process of forming a Mars colony, and they will begin the recruiting process in July.

Mars One will begin accepting video submissions for this first round of astronauts, and while anyone can apply, the organization is looking to weed out the spammers and time-wasters by instituting a $25 entry fee, which certainly isn’t a lot, but it could help with separating the serious candidates from the ones who simply just want to have fun. The fee will also be put towards funding for the entire project.

Mars One hopes to raise millions of dollars from the application process alone, and they expect that a million applications will be sent in, and some of the video applications may end up going viral, which hints that Mars One may not exactly keep these video applications confidential, but one million applications sure is a strong goal to set. However, the company already has 45,000 people on its mailing list, with over 10,000 people already sending in emails explaining their interest in going to Mars.

Anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply, and the video should explain why you should be selected. However, this won’t be an easy job, and Mars One says that you should be prepared to say goodbye to Earth forever, since the organization has no plans to bring astronauts back. By July 2015, Mars One wants to have 24 astronauts recruited, where they will then face seven years of training that will include spending three months at a time in a replica of the Mars colony.

[via Space.com]

Astronaut recruitment for Mars colony project to begin in July is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Watch out NASA, Russia is making a big effort to catch up with you in the fight for space travel supremacy. Russian president Vladimir Putin has announced the country’s plan for a new space program that will cost around $50 billion over the course of seven years. The announcement comes on the anniversary of when the country (formerly the Soviet Union) put the first man in space.

The plan includes multiple improvements to the Roscosmos space program, including building a completely new cosmodrome, which is actually already under construction as we speak. Putin believes that this drive will help Russia’s economy and will improve the country’s position as a space travel competitor.

Other than constructing a new cosmodrome, Russia plans to update its outdated space equipment, including the rockets and capsules, as well as put more focus on unmanned space exploration. Currently, Russia only launches the Soyuz capsule to take astronauts and cosmonauts up to the International Space Station.

Russia still launches all of its manned missions from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is the same place where Gagarin made his historic space flight over 50 years ago, so a new cosmodrome certainly isn’t too much to ask for. When it’s all said and done, Russia will have spent more money on its new space program than any other program in the world.

[via Phys.org]

Russia reveals plans for new $50 billion space program is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA has decided on two “low-cost” missions that it plans on launching in 2017. The first project involves the MIT-led Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) project, and the second project involves the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which will be mounted onto the International Space Station. NASA will spend a total of $255 million for both projects.

MIT’s TESS project will receive $200 million in funding. The TESS project will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey. It will scan nearby stars for exoplanets. Its primary focus are planets that are similar in size to Earth. TESS will note when these planets transit their host stars from its perspective. George Ricker, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), stated,

TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission. It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.

NASA’s second project, NICER, will be mounted onto the International Space Station. It will observe and measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources, also known as as X-ray timing. The goal for NICER is to allow scientists to better understand neutron stars by exploring the states of matter within the stars and exploring their interior and exterior compositions. The project will be drastically cheaper than the TESS project, costing NASA about $55 million to fund. NICER’s principal investigator is Keith Gendreau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. TESS’s George Ricker will also be a partner in the NICER Mission.

These projects are part of NASA’s Explorer program. These are frequent, low-cost investigations that are relevant to NASA’s astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The first program launched in 1958, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts. Over 90 more missions have been launched since then. John Grunsfeld, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science in Washington stated,

With these missions we will learn about the most extreme states of matter by studying neutron stars, and we will identify many nearby star systems with rocky planets in the habitable zone for further study by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

[via Space.com]

NASA chooses TESS and NICER projects for 2017 missions is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The moon known as Titan should ring a bell for you if you’re interested in the possibility of life on planets other than our own. Saturn’s yellow moon has been the subject of life-sustaining chatter for some time now, the most recent discovery about it having been found in an experiment done right here on Earth. Down at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, an experiment has been done that suggests life in a whole new region before suspected to be devoid of it.

The experiment at hand simulated the atmosphere of Titan and suggested that complex organic chemistry extends lower into the atmosphere than science previously suspected. These strands are such that the building blocks of life could spring forth – these results point toward prebiotic materials swimming around an area of this moon that makes this heavenly body exciting all over again.

“Scientists previously thought that as we got closer to the surface of Titan, the moon’s atmospheric chemistry was basically inert and dull. Our experiment shows that’s not true. The same kind of light that drives biological chemistry on Earth’s surface could also drive chemistry on Titan, even though Titan receives far less light from the sun and is much colder. Titan is not a sleeping giant in the lower atmosphere, but at least half awake in its chemical activity.” – Murthy Gudipati, lead author of the paper on this subject published at JPL.

The paper published on these findings can be found in Nature Communications this week. Co-author Mark Allen, principal investigator of the JPL Titan team that is a part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, had a bit to say as well.

“We’ve known that Titan’s upper atmosphere is hospitable to the formation of complex organic molecules. Now we know that sunlight in the Titan lower atmosphere can kick-start more complex organic chemistry in liquids and solids rather than just in gases.” – Allen

The result of the experiments conducted by this team show a much larger volume in the bits of Titan’s atmosphere involved in the production of more complex organic chemicals than previously suspected. The full team of researchers involved on this project included Ronen Jacovi, a NASA postdoctoral fellow from Israel; Isabelle Couturier of the University of Provence, Marseille, France; and Antti Lignell, a Finnish Academy of Science postdoctoral fellow from Helsinki at JPL.

NOTE: Straight from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute, the image above is a “true color snapshot” from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft of Titan itself!

[via Michael Interbartolo]

Saturn’s moon Titan reveals even more life-sustaining possibilities is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Just a week or so after Expedition 34 left the International Space Station, a new set of crew members have joined the three already on board. Expedition 35 successfully docked to the International Space Station last night at 10:28 pm ET carrying one American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts. The Soyuz capsule launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at around 4:30 pm ET.

This was the first launch in which a manned flight made an “express” route towards the International Space Station, cutting down flight time from around two days to just six hours. Previously, Russian Progress cargo vehicles have made the express flights, but this is the first time that a manned flight has done so.

After docking to the ISS at approximately 10:30 pm ET, the capsule opened its hatch and was welcomed by the ISS at 12:35 am ET. So, in total, it took around eight hours to get from the ground to inside the space station — a full day’s work. The crew joined ISS Commander Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn of NASA, and Roman Romanenko of Roscosmos, who have in been the ISS since December 21, 2012.

There’s a total of six crew members now aboard the ISS, making it slightly more crowded than before, but Hadfield, Marshburn, and Romanenko will return to Earth in May aboard the Soyuz capsule that Expedition 35 came up in last night. Three additional crew members will join Cassidy and cosmonauts in late May. Cassidy, Vinogradov, and Misurkin are scheduled to return to Earth in September.

Expedition 35 crew successfully docks to the International Space Station is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.