pale blue dot
Amateur astronomers in the Netherlands took an amazing Moon-Earth photo using a Chinese satellite. On May 20, 2018, China launched Queqiao lunar communications relay satellite, a key component of the upcoming Chang’e 4 lunar landing mission. During its journey to the Moon (actually Earth-Moon L2 point (see notes 1), it dropped off a pair of student-made small …
Continue reading “Amazing Moon-Earth Photo by the Amateurs using a Chinese Satellite”
In the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, there’s a location called “Point Nemo”. It’s not a place where humans live, in fact, there is no land there: not an island, not even a small rock. It is actually the remotest place from any human civilization you can find on Earth. It lies at least …
Back in December 1990, during its flyby of Earth, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies, pointed its instruments towards Earth, at the urging of Carl Sagan. And, it has found evidence of life on our planet. This can be a key to detecting …
Continue reading “Earth can be a model for detecting vegetation on exoplanets”
Earth, our beautiful blue planet. It is the third planet from the Sun, but above all, it is our home, the only astronomical object known to harbor life. Here are the top 10 best Earth quotes.
For eons, skywatchers have been fascinated by the pale red dot that not only unpredictably moves backward in the night sky but also shines a compelling blood-red. Its color, indeed, is one of the first features we notice about Mars. It seizes our attention, and its compelling ambiguity has evoked a deep visceral reaction from …
On August 6, 2012, at 05:17 UTC, NASA has successfully landed a Mini-Cooper-sized rover, Curiosity, on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars. The 900-kg rover (899 kg, to be exact, which is 1,982 lbs) is equipped with six 50 cm (20 in) diameter wheels in a rocker-bogie suspension (see notes 1). For the first time in …
Those of us who have grown up watching the iconic space saga Star Wars are quite informed about what robots can accomplish. While that’s only a reel representation, but it definitely points to an abundance of opportunities in the realm of space research.
In this amazing video, the RemoveDEBRIS satellite deploys a net and captures space debris, a defunct nanosatellite – and this has happened (capturing space junk in space) happened for the first time in space exploration history. Orbital debris is a really big problem: it can cause collisions in space, and these collisions could have serious …
The human future in the cosmos could be all but limitless if we don’t destroy ourselves first. The same would be true of intelligent aliens elsewhere in the Universe, assuming they exist: how far they travel depends strongly on how long they survive as a species. That survival variable, which the US astronomer Frank Drake …
Continue reading “How far beyond Earth will we go to safeguard our species?”
There are a lot of misconceptions about space. Science-fiction movies bad in science and tabloid papers greatly contribute to these myths and misconceptions. Here are the top 21 of them, we need to stop believing.
