According to a new study, microbes like those found in Earth’s deep ocean could potentially thrive in the underground ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Both molecular hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4) already have been detected in the plume. Researchers have shown that Methanothermococcus
On February 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully tested Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket that the American company ever built. When lifted off, it became also the most powerful operational rocket in the world. Powerful rockets like Falcon Heavy may one day carry humans to the Moon or Mars. But there might be an even more important use of powerful rockets like SpaceX’ Falcon Heavy and BFR, Blue Origin’s New Glenn or NASA’s SLS: asteroid mining.
NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured a new Earth-Moon image on Jan. 17, 2018, from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). Spacecraft used its NavCam1 imager to take this photo, as part of an engineering test. In the image, The Earth and the moon are just two bright dots against the vastness of black space – which reminds us of Carl Sagan’s famous speech: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”
A breathtakingly beautiful photo of a historical moment: NASA Astronaut Robert L. Stewart untethered above the Earth during the first Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) exercise. The photo was taken on February 7, 1984, during the EVA 1 (Extravehicular activity) of STS-41-B, the tenth NASA Space Shuttle mission, and the fourth flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The total duration of the spacewalk was 5 hours 55 minutes. Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart tested a nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). In this EVA, Bruce McCandless II broke the untethered spacewalking record with a distance of 98 meters (320 feet).
It took 27 years, but finally, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft beat Voyager 1‘s record for being farthest from Earth while capturing images. Taken on December 5, 2017, New Horizons’ image of the open star cluster NGC 3532 (also commonly known as the Football Cluster or the Wishing Well Cluster) became the farthest image ever made by any spacecraft, breaking a 27-year record set by Voyager 1. But for a very short time! About 2 hours later, New Horizons broke its own record with images of two Kuiper Belt objects.
One of the most interesting photos in history: the entire Earth clearly reflects off the side of a… car!
This will go down as one of the greatest videos in history, and you must share it with everyone you know. It is one of the great achievements our species has ever done. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy test flight was successful and the rocket’s upper stage, together with Elon Musk’s electric sports car Tesla and the dummy “Starman”, are on their way to Mars.
When Falcon Heavy lifted off, it became the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. This rocket that may one day carry humans to the Moon or Mars! With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)-a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage, and fuel-Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost. Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9.
Spacewalking or Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut or cosmonaut outside a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s appreciable atmosphere (a moonwalk is also an EVA). The first spacewalker was the Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov. He became the first human to conduct an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on March 18, 1965; exiting the capsule during the Voskhod 2 mission for a 12-minute spacewalk. Since this very short EVA, a lot of astronauts/cosmonauts spent many hours outside their spacecraft, mostly for maintenance missions. Here are the top 20 longest spacewalks in history.
During the Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Expedition 54 Commander Aleksandr Misurkin’s spacewalk on February 2, 2018, NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei published a photo on his twitter account and asked his followers that “Can you find the spacewalker’s legs in this photo?” Vande Hei added, “Russian spacewalk continues!”
NASA astronaut Randy “Komrade” Bresnik, the commander of Expedition 53 (the 53rd expedition to the International Space Station) has published a beautiful video on his Twitter account titled “Through the eyes of a spaceman: One World Many Views”. In the video, Bresnik shared photos of places he’d visited on Earth alongside photos of the same locations he snapped from space. He also wrote: “You don’t have to be in outer space to experience the beauty of our home planet. Capture the beauty of a moment, or the excitement of an instant, and share it with others.”