SPACE ZILLA

2019-09-29T15:51:00.000+05:30

SpaceX's Starship updates, Elon Musk unveils gigantic shuttle for private trips to the moon.

During Saturday evening's hour-long, particularly windy press conference, Musk announced that the next test would take place in "about one to two months" before detailing how Starship would control its landing.

"This is quite a new approach to controlling a rocket," Musk said. "Much more akin to a skydiver than a plane."

Musk laughed as he showed the crowd in Boca Chica how the craft would control the fall, with his hands acting as the ship. Getting into the specifics a little more, Musk explained the importance of a steel heat shield that would only cost a fraction of a carbon fiber heat shield. "I'm in love with steel," Musk said.

SpaceX still has a lot of work to do to get this thing flying on such a short timescale. The Starship prototype makes for an impressive sight on the ground. It’ll be even more of a spectacle when it finally takes to the skies.

Top Space Stories of 2018.

2018-12-29T22:08:00.000+05:30

Year 2018 was a productive and successful year for Spaceflight and Space Exploration and here are some achievement which open door for human civilization on mars.

Here are some of Top Space Stories of 2018 and spaceflight activities.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Launch

The Falcon Heavy launched on Feb. 6, 2018 and quickly unveiled a treat to those watching the livestream: the primary payload was a dummy called "Starman," riding in a Tesla X roadster (an homage to one of SpaceX founder Elon Musk's other companies).

The upper stage of the rocket fired the car and passenger out into deep space, toward the orbit of Mars. To say the launch went viral doesn't begin to describe the magnitude of social-media excitement that day.

NASA's InSight Mars Landing

InSight, the first American spacecraft to land on the red planet since the Curiosity rover in 2012, touched down safely on Nov. 26, an event that attracted viewers around the country.

A seismic wave detector will listen for underground “marsquakes,” or seismic waves, and take the “pulse” of Mars. While Mars doesn’t seem to have plate tectonics, seismic waves could be measured from cracking and cooling, meteorite impacts or underground magma.

Parker Solar Probe launches 'touch' the sun

The Parker Solar Probe lifted off successfully on Aug. 12 on a journey that will see it dip multiple times into the sun's outer atmosphere, giving unprecedented insights into the sun's composition and inner mechanics.
One of our star's key mysteries is why the corona is so darn hot. Temperatures there range between 1.8 million and 5.4 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million and 3 million degrees Celsius). Compare that with the surface of the sun, a far cooler 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C). Scientists suspect that the sun's convection and magnetic fields contribute to the corona's high temperature, but they need observations to back up the theory.

TESS launches in search of exoplanets

TESS is designed to look for planets near stars in our own neighborhood. Finding planets close to Earth provides a few advantages, such as allowing other telescopes to quickly zero in on these worlds to learn more about their atmospheric composition.

TESS will also act as a pathfinder observatory for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch in 2021 on a science mission that will partly include exoplanet studies.

Chinese lander launch for moon's dark side

The Chang'e 4 spacecraft flew from our planet on Dec. 7 on a quest to land a rover and a stationary lander in early January. Its expected destination is the Von Kármán Crater, which is 115 miles (186 km) wide. The crater is a part of the larger South Pole-Aitken Basin complex, which spans an incredible 1,600 miles (2,500 km).
The moon's far side is not visible from Earth and, in fact, was not even imaged until the first Soviet satellites orbited the moon in the 1960s.

Japan's Hayabusa2 arrives at Ryugu

After a more than three-year journey through space, the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrived at asteroid Ryugu on June 27 and quickly got to work.
The aim of Hayabusa2 is to return a sample of the asteroid back to Earth, just as the original Hayabusa spacecraft did nearly a decade ago. But first, Hayabusa2 dropped onto Ryugu two rovers and a lander, which sent back pictures of a bizarre surface.

Voyager2 reaches interstellar space

One of NASA's most famous spacecraft reached a cosmic milestone around Nov. 5, when Voyager 2 passed the boundary into interstellar space — the place where the influence of the sun gives way to that of other stars.

It's not NASA's first spacecraft to do so; the probe's twin, Voyager 1, made it to interstellar space in 2012. So, Voyager 2 now provides another data point about how the transition zone between the heliopause (the sun's neighborhood) and interstellar space works.

2018-12-22T16:01:00.000+05:30

Satellite 'AKARI' detects water in 17 asteroids.

A Japanese satellite 'Akari' and research team has detected the existence of water in a number of asteroids, using the infrared light.

Researchers and scientist from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) and the University of Tokyo found that water is retained in asteroids as hydrated minerals, which were produced by chemical reactions of water and anhydrous rocks that occurred inside the asteroid.

According to the study - presented in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan - hydrated minerals are stable even above the sublimation temperature of water ice. By looking for hydrated minerals, scientists can investigate whether asteroids contain water.

“Asteroids are considered to be one of the candidates that brought water to Earth. Note that the liquid water is not flowing on the surface of asteroids, but water is retained in asteroids as hydrated minerals, which were produced by chemical reactions of water and anhydrous rocks that occurred inside the asteroids - that is, aqueous alteration,” the research highlights.

Scientists can detect the water situation on these asteroids. Japan's Infrared Satellite was launched in February 2006 and its operation was completed in 2011. For the first time, the study of data collected by the scientists has found evidence of hydrated mineral at 17 asteroids.

Image Explorer

2018-12-22T11:54:00.000+05:30

This Day in Space

2018-12-22T11:37:00.000+05:30

Apollo 8 Launched 1st Astronauts Around the Moon 50 Years Ago

2018-12-21T20:50:00.000+05:30

Apollo 8 Launched 1st Astronauts Around the Moon 50 Years Ago.

On December 21, 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders, and James Lovell left the Kennedy Space Center to fly around the moon. They spent 20 hours in lunar orbit, then returned home after more than six days in space.The Apollo 8 mission was a critical step toward achieving President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon. Nine other lunar missions followed Apollo 8, bringing a dozen men to the moon and gathering hundreds of pounds of rock and soil samples for analysis.

2018-12-20T20:49:00.000+05:30

Virgin Galactic tourism rocket ship test flight reaches edge of space.

Virgin Galactic's tourism spaceship climbed more than 50 miles high above California's Mojave Desert on Thursday, reaching for the first time what the company considers the boundary of space.

"People have literally put their lives on the line to get us here," Branson said. "This day is as much for them as it is for all of us."