Hasta La Gadget!

It’s not exactly controlling the weather, but it’s surprisingly close: NASA is set to launch a rocket tomorrow, called the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE), that will create artificial clouds at the outermost layers of Earth’s atmosphere, according to Space.com.

The idea is to create clouds around the rocket’s exhaust particles, in an effort to simulate the natural formation of noctilucent clouds high in the atmosphere. The real clouds are made of ice crystals and usually sit about 50 to 55 miles above Earth; to create the artificial clouds, the rocket will release dust particles a little higher so they can settle down to the right altitude naturally, according to the report.

The launch will occur NASA’s Wallops Flight Factility in Virginia, and is scheduled for Tuesday between 7:30 and 7:57 pm EDT. (Image credit: Space.com/Veres Viktor)

NASA astronauts replaced a coolant tank the size of a small car late Thursday on the International Space Station.

During the course of about six and a half hours, Olivas and Christer Fuglesang spacewalked outside the space station to install the new 1,7–pound ammonia coolant tank, Space.com reports, and stick the old one 1,300-pound one back about shuttle Discovery.

“If you can almost picture someone handing around a Mini Cooper car between the two of them, it’s about the similar weight and mass of the tank they were handing between each other,” said Zeb Scoville, lead spacewalk officer for Discovery’s mission, in the article.

As they did this, the two kept their eyes on a large piece of space junk that came off a 3-year-old European rocket; it turned out to pose no threat to the astronauts or the shuttle, according to the report. (Image credit: NASA TV)

The Mt. Wilson Observatory, a century-old astronomical compound located on a 5,700-foot-high peak in southern California, has contributed much to our knowledge of stellar evolution and cosmology, providing the first observational evidence backing the Big Bang theory. The aging observatory has survived much adversity, but now faces a new challenge–it is menaced by a wildfire dubbed the “Station Fire,” which has scorched over 85,000 acres in the mountains north of Los Angeles and claimed the lives of two firefighters. Despite the fire’s rapid approach to the mountain, there is hope that this historic observatory may weather this latest threat.

The fire has burned perilously close to Mt. Wilson, which also hosts
more than 2 dozen television and radio broadcast antennas serving the
LA area. The mountaintop has been evacuated, but officials are
optimistic that the work that firefighters put into clearing brush and
dropping fire retardants in the area will pay off. Although the fire is
approaching the mountain from two directions and is expected to reach
it within the next day, the Los Angeles County Fire Department is
hopeful that the observatory and communications towers may pull through
relatively unscathed.

Look out below: astronomers have discovered that a giant, fiery exoplanet called WASP-18b appears locked in a death spiral with its star.

The planet is about 10 times the size of Jupiter and appears to be very close to its star, according to the Associated Press. WASP-18 is so large that it’s triggering huge plasma tides on the star’s surface, the report said–which in turn are distorting the planet’s orbit. Even crazier: the planet orbits the star in less than one day.

Planet discovered Coel Hellier predicts in the article that within the next million years, the planet will spiral right into the star–which should be good for some spectacular fireworks.  “It’s causing its own destruction by creating these tides,” Hellier said.

Like most exoplanets, astronomers discovered WASP-18 by monitoring variations in light from its star whenever the planet crossed in front of it. (Image credit: CARREAU/ESA/Nature)

“Sub-orbital” commercial space flight? Bah, that’s nothing. According to Slashdot, a new international consortium called Excalibur Almaz Limited plans to launch genuine orbital space flights for commercial purposes, which would represent a significant step ahead of what other groups have already proposed.

The consortium will be a joint effort by the U.S., Russia, and Japan and looks to get underway by 2013. The group plans to use a formerly top-secret Soviet re-entry vehicle, called Almaz, to ferry research crews into orbit around Earth for week-long missions, the report said. For now, this is nothing aside from an announcement of intent, so Mr. Branson can rest easy for now. (Image credit: Excalibur Almaz)