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Space, the final frontier...of warfare? Science fiction tales often center around the militarization of space, with lasers and torpedoes made of light racing past (and through) battleships and star destroyers. More »
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High-energy radiation and atomic oxygen wreak havoc on satellite parts. To evaluate the durability of materials being developed for future satellites, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is running samples through a space-based torture test called MISSE-8. Astronauts bolted a platform full of one-inch samples of mirror coatings, laser-tuning crystals, structural foam and other materials to the outside of the International Space Station, where it will remain for just over two years. The samples, which were sent to the ISS on one of the last space shuttle flights, in May, will return to Earth in July 2013 on the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Scientists from the labs that made each sample will examine them for pitting, cracks and discoloration. More »
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Special and general relativity help us see time, space, and energy in strange new ways. That strangeness seems to remove the theories from our everyday experience. Despite their exotic appeal, Einstein's famous theories are part of our everyday life. Find out how you depend on special and general relativity to find your way around. More »
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Put in plain language, astrophysicists have figured out why Jupiter's moon Europa looks so fucked up. The frozen moon's surface is a layer of solid ice over a liquid sea — and that ice is shattered, cracked, broken, sunken, and twisted into contortions that science can't fully explain. But now a new study suggests one simple source of the Europan landscape that's so distorted it's called "chaos terrain." More »
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The deliciously named O/OREOS (Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses) project will use cheaper nanosatellites to study the effects of space living on organic molecules. Paul Gilster of Centauri Dreams has the details. More »
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Check out that blue alien swarm off the coast of Ireland. It's phytoplankton in bloom, in an image captured last spring and released this week. They swirl in the water, almost like an intelligence... with a purpose. [ESA via NationalGeographic] More »
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Find out how a balloon, filled with nothing more than helium, can pull a satellite down to earth. More »
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August 9 is the 65th anniversary of the day the US dropped "Fat Man" over Nagasaki. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Archive has created a Google Earth map that documents where survivors were in relation to the blast. More »
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NASA has created a global snapshot of the world's forests using satellites and LIDAR, a laser technology that measures the height of forest canopy using pulses of light. This map took seven years and 250 million pulses to create. More »
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Space junk is increasing at a rate of 5% per year. Luckily, researchers at the University of Surrey have invented a "Cubesail" satellite that will reduce future orbital garbage. Once equipment has done its job, the Cubesail will de-orbit debris. More »
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Over the past few days, hundreds of wildfires in Laos, Burma and Thailand have grown so large that their smoke can be seen from space. More »
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Every one of Saturn's rings has had a known moon — except the mysterious "G" ring. Now NASA's Cassini Space Probe has found the planet's 61st satellite. Meanwhile, you've voted for your next space-porn fix. More »
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A lot of the satellites we depend on for modern life are in high orbits, beyond the reach of Earth-based repair missions. It would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, to send a team of astronauts up there. As a result, when those satellites fail or run out of fuel, they become space junk, and billions of dollars must be spent to replace them — until now. A team at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario is developing a robot repair team that could keep those satellites in orbit for years to come. More »
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Relentlessly cheerful narration and industrial animation are the highlights of this 1960 newsreel explaining how future telephone technology will bounce calls off artificial satellites. In the meantime, they practice bouncing a New Jersey-to-California call off the moon—and with only a 2.5 second delay on either end! More »
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These thunderheads are brewing over the midwestern United States, a region where thunderstorms can whip up pretty damn fast. Courtesy of NASA, this image is one of a series running on the Boston Globe's website to celebrate the work done by the International Space Station. Want to see what this kind of cloud looks like a little closer? More »
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It sounds like voodoo, but NASA researcher Friedemann Freund is so convinced he's discovered the secret to predicting earthquakes that he's put up $1 million dollars of his own money to fly a group of satellites into Earth orbit to test his theory. The instruments could be up in as little as two years, looking for small electrical charges that build up as rocks in the planet's crust get strained by the massive forces of plate tectonics. Of course there are a lot of dissenters to Freund's theory, but according to an internal memo leaked to the press in May, other NASA scientists are planning to tell the world later this summer that the idea works. More »
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Today, a satellite was involved in your life. Whether you checked a weather report, watched SportsCenter or looked for your mom's house on Google Maps, you did something that would have been impossible without an automated spacecraft orbiting hundreds of miles above your head. But how many of these satellites do you know by name? Here are the top ten you need to know, because they make modern life possible. More »
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MIT's teaming up with Google to design the first satellite that can really, truly search the sky for planets similar to Earth in size and terrain, taking us a giant step closer to making contact with extraterrestrials. Google is funding the development of a six high-res, wide-field digital cameras with a 192-megapixel resolution for TESS—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. That's enough resolution to gauge the brightness of two million stars. MIT scientists are currently hard at work with the design of TESS' observatory. More »
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This is what a mass evacuation from a city looks like from space. Using satellites orbiting over Africa, human rights groups published UNOSAT satellite imagery to show, in very simple terms, the human cost of violence in the Chadian capital city of N'Djamena. Over 10,000 people are crammed on a bridge, trying to escape into the neighboring nation of Cameroon. The black dots are people, and the yellow dashes are vehicles, most likely trucks and buses. It's a chilling portrait of the human future, wracked with violence and recorded via space-based surveillance devices, taken on February 27. See the full map below. More »
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The Soyuz-FG launcher sticks to a 1950s snub-nosed aesthetic, even though it was built in 2001. The Soyuz is preparing to launch Dec. 14 from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome. Image by STR/AFP/Getty Images. More »
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What will it take to launch another space age to replace the one that ended with the Cold War? Maybe another space race. China is ramping up its efforts to put people back on the Moon, launch more lunar orbiters, and build its own space station. Already, China is challenging the U.S.' domination of space launches. More »
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Satellites will soon capture ultrasound images of unborn children in rural Nunavut and beam them all the way to Ontario. It's just part of a new pilot program which uses technology developed for diagnosing astronauts from Earth. Already, doctors in Calgary can look at real-time ultrasounds of patients in Banff and figure out what ails them. How long will it be before the satellite itself can scan your body from space? More »
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Fifty years ago, the Space Age was born with the flight of Soviet satellite Sputnik, and with that came the age of Surveillance Paranoia. More Sputnik fetish photography available from your pals at NASA. More »
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