At midnight tonight, the federal government’s budget sequester kicks in. That means—if congressional leaders and President Obama can’t sort out their disagreements over the country’s finances—$85 billion will be cut from the 2013 budgets for government programs. Space exploration, medical research, and technology investment are just a few of the items on the block. More »
This morning, Elon Musk’s SpaceX program shot its third rocket into space. The Falcon 9 carries with it a Dragon cargo capsule, and will deliver supplies to ISS astronauts not entirely unlike a 19th century freight train delivering mining equipment to California. The launch, as you can see in the video above, went off without a hitch. More »
Our planet’s recent close call with one asteroid, and direct visit from another has definitely made it seem important to consider how to avoid the pesky things in the future. One solution is to direct the Sun’s power into pulverizing lasers, but another option just involves covering incoming rocks with spray paint. Simple as that. More »
While Curiosity’s off drilling into the surface of Mars, plenty of other man-made, space-bound machines are surveying the rest of the solar system, and coming with some pretty cool stuff. NASA’s MESSENGER, for instance, put together quite the mesmerizing footage of Mercury’s spin. More »
Most of us got a little distracted from uneventful passing of near-Earth asteroid DA14 after that unrelated meteorite decided to slam into Russia. Photographer Colin Legg keep his eyes—and camera—on DA14 though, and put together this time-lapse of its flyby that makes it seem like an insignificant little dot. More »
That little, white pixelated bean spinning around above might look more like a bad 80s video game than the near-messenger of quick and devastating apocalypse, but that’s what happens when you’re taking shots 74,000 miles away from your subject. What you’re seeing is, in fact, 2012 DA14 at a resolution of around 13 feet per pixel over an 8 hour period just as it was mercifully passing our beautiful space marble by on the evening of February 15. More »
If I were Pluto, I would be really pissed off with the astronomers that just announced the tiniest planet ever discovered. It’s a new planetary system called Kepler-37, which is centered around a star similar to our sun about 210 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Lyra. More »
“On July 19, 2012, the Sun produced a medium-size solar flare,” NASA says on this new video captured by its Solar Dynamics Observatory, “what occurred with the flare was amazing.” It’s true. It’s amazing. Fire started to fall down like rain—a hell waterfall many times the size of planet Earth. You have to watch this uncanny document for yourself. More »
Sandwiches are objectively the single greatest culinary invention—ever. But how are you supposed to consume this marvel of man in the zero-gravity environment that is outer space? Fortunately, everyone’s favorite Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, seems to have solved the problem. More »
Two large flying space rocks have hit or almost hit Earth lately. I think everyone agrees that this needs to not be happening. So two California researchers are developing a plan for destroying asteroids in space. Get after it. More »
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