Basically the US is saying that it’s the wild west out in space: if you can get there, you can mine your asteroid.
Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources
I’m very curious what other countries have to say about this?
The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the plane breaking apart.
One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.
Friday’s flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rockets fire after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release.
The problem happened about 50 minutes after takeoff and within minutes of the spaceship’s release from its mothership, said Stuart Witt, CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.
via Investigators, Branson Head to Spacecraft Crash Site | Military.com.
Good luck picking up the pieces and carrying on.
A very cheap mission has managed to park into Mars Orbit first time, something never before done. Congratulations India!
ISRO: Mars Orbiter Mission.
at 4,268px × 5,690px it’s a huge starship guide featuring hundreds of spacecraft to scale.
Size Comparison – Science Fiction Spaceships by DirkLoechel on deviantART.
How did the Moon form? According to the prevailing hypothesis, a Mars-sized body known as Theia smashed into Earth. Herwartz et al. analyzed fresh basalt samples from three Apollo landing sites and compared them with several samples of Earth’s mantle. The oxygen isotope values measured in these lunar rocks differ significantly from the terrestrial material, supporting the giant-impact hypothesis.
via Identification of the giant impactor Theia in lunar rocks.
Very quickly! Will it only be a few decades until it’s gone?
Last month, physicists used this idea to build the world’s first entanglement-enhanced microscope that dramatically increases its resolution over purely classical instruments. They created entangled photons and used one to illuminate the object. The second photon can then give them information about the first that they use to increase the resolution of the resulting image.
via How To Build A Quantum Telescope — Medium.
Yes, there are problems, no it isn’t finished yet – but it’s a great idea!
Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.
“The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness. This is the first direct image of gravitational waves across the primordial sky,” said co-leader Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC).
via First direct evidence of cosmic inflation (Update).
IE yes, there /was/ a big bang
This book addresses the simple and complex issues that have been identified through the development of space elevator concepts over the last decade. The report begins with a summary of those ideas in Edwards’ and Westling’s book The Space Elevator (2003). Out of these beginnings has risen a worldwide cadre focused upon their areas of expertise as applied to space elevator development and operational infrastructure. The report answers some basic questions about the feasibility of a space elevator infrastructure.
via Science Deck – Space Elevators.
This study was conducted under the auspices of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) […] , as well as the International Space Elevator Consortium. […] There were 41 authors and 5 editors.
2 california companies are launching swarms of satellites to low orbit to bring near real time imagery of the entire world.
http://gizmodo.com/how-swarms-of-tiny-satellites-are-creating-a-real-time-1497890594
Of the 150,000 stars in our Milky Way galaxy snapped by the NASA probe in the past three years, more than 3,000 planets have been identified. Scientists then focused on the stars similar to our Sun and tried to find planets between one and two times the size of Earth in those stars’ Goldilocks orbital zones.
Their findings suggest that 22 per cent of those stars had planets about the size of Earth that could harbor liquid water – a basic building block for life as we know it. The team said the actual total could be much higher given the difficulty involved in finding them. Kepler relies on seeing planets pass directly in front of the target star on the same orbital plane as the telescope.
Galaxy is CRAMMED with EARTHLIKE WORLDS – plus, possibly ALIENS • The Register.
And this is how they actually get their names – pretty boring, but to be expected from the guys who declared Pluto a non-planet…
Naming of Astronomical Objects | IAU.
One of the problems DTN fixes is queueing transmissions, as transmitting to mars at the speed of light incurs an 8 second delay.
NASA fires-up experimental space Internet for robot control.
Two dwarf stars – oribiting each other every 13 minutes – have been observed to slightly change the size of their orbits as well as the time it takes to complete them. The effect occurs when expected to happen as they hit the waves.
BBC News – Gravitational waves spotted from white-dwarf pair.
There are a few new space elevator ideas coming along, one is a kickstarter project, another from Tokyo. They want to build one on the moon too!
Space elevator ideas rising again – Cosmic Log.
It’s the fifth moon they’ve discovered. Pluto stays a planet in my book.
New Moon Discovered in Our Solar System.
NASA has contracted this rocket to very carefully approach the ISS for resupply runs. Well done Elon Musk!
SpaceX Dragon, first private ship to the ISS, launched successfully • The Register.
These guys hope to launch a hovercraft to the moon which can mine, place things there and do scientific experiments in 2013. They’re expecting to be able to do it with a budget of around $70m, because they’re based on existing technologies.
HOME.
Atlantis and its four astronauts left Earth for the final space shuttle mission, which will cap off an amazing 30-year program of exploration, which launched great observatories, built an International Space Station, and taught us more about how humans can live and work in space.
With the International Space Station flying 220 miles high and east of Christchurch, New Zealand, Atlantis left Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:29 a.m. EDT. There was a slight delay at T-31 seconds while retraction of the Gaseous Oxygen Vent Arm, or “Beanie Cap,” was verified. Atlantis will dock with the space station on Sunday.
via NASA – Space Shuttle.
They keep discovering more and more water everywhere!
Scientists detect Earth-equivalent amount of water within the moon.
