Crowdsource the launch of a nano-satellite into space – Kickstarter

We are developing a nano-satellite, and mobile apps to go with it, as the focus for a global education and public outreach campaign. The satellite, called SkyCube, is a 10x10x10 cm “1U” CubeSat intended for launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2013. Orbiting more than 300 miles up, on a …

Prison inmates at San Quentin get contract to build satellite parts for NASA

The NASA Ames Research Center is known for establishing innovative partnerships and Pete Worden, the former Air Force general who serves as the Center’s director, is known as a maverick. Still, the latest joint venture to come to light has caught even some longtime NASA observers by surprise. Under supervision from NASA Ames, inmates working in the …

Hubble discovers another moon orbiting Pluto – that’s two in the last year

A team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is reporting the discovery of another moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across. It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be co-planar with the other …

NASA’s master plan – to create the next space airlines

The Commercial Crew Program is responsible for helping companies develop vehicles that can ferry astronauts, and maybe civilians, to space. Could this lead to a ‘spaceline’ industry, a la the airlines? An interview with Ed Mango, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program:   What’s the goal of the Commercial Crew Program? We still have Americans in …

All 786 known planets, to scale

All 786 known planets, to scale. “This” (tiny gray box) is our solar system. The rest of these orbit other stars and were only discovered recently. Most of them are huge because these are the kind we learned to detect first, but now we’re finding that small ones are actually more common. We know nothing …

China launches it’s first female ‘taikonaut’ into space

Saturday’s launch of a piloted space capsule known as Shenzhou-9 marks China’s breakthrough into the exclusive club once made up only of the United States and Russia. One of the three astronauts in the capsule is a woman, 33-year-old Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman in space. Shenzhou-9 was launched at 6:37 p.m (local time) …

MESSENGER sends first data back to Earth – uncovers ice on Mercury

For several years scientists have been begging to test their theories about Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. You see, the radar signals come back showing ice exists on the planet, but how could ice exist on a planet so incredibly hot? NASA sent the spacecraft MESSENGER to orbit the planet and figure the …

The highest resolution single-shot of Earth ever taken

Mesmerizing timelapse of the Earth is the highest resolution single-shot imagery ever taken of our planet from space. The video and images were snapped by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L during its orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator. The images are in 121 megapixels; That’s 1 km per pixel. In the video shown above here, …

Biggest full moon of the year – this Saturday night!

The largest full moon of 2012 happens this Saturday, but it’s OK if you don’t really notice. The moon doesn’t really get bigger, it just gets closer to Earth. At 8:40 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, according to the Griffith Observatory Sky Report, the moon will be at its closest point in its orbit to the …

How close does an object have to be to earth to be pulled by gravity?

Pulled from Quora, here is one of the best, and most popular, answers to a question. Written by Mark Eichenlaub, a graduate student in physics. How close does an object have to be to earth to be pulled by gravity? This question doesn’t have a direct answer because, for lack of a less-direct way of …