Planetary Resources has kicked off a Kickstarter to raise a million dollars for the project.
Category Archives: Space Science
What If Earth Was The Size Of A Bowling Ball?
Randall Munroe is asking the important questions.
Kepler
…has lost a reaction wheel.
This is bad news for exo-planet hunting.
Having a deep-space capability would allow the repair of systems like this.
A Space Hacker Workshop
I’m busy preparing my presentation for this afternoon at Space Access, but Ed Wright is announcing a space hacker workshop up at Ames Research Center in Mountain View on May 4-5 for people who want to learn how to build cubesats that can fly suborbitally on XCOR’s Lynx.
[Update Friday morning]
I originally wrote this post in Phoenix last Saturday, but didn’t actually publish it until yesterday, in case it had anyone scratching their heads.
A Mars Cometary Impact
But what about the Martian dinosaurs? Won’t anyone think of them?
Jagged Ice
Europa could be a challenging place to land.
It seems to me that you just have to budget some extra propellant for a hover to melt it, then drop in with a floating ship. Too bad there’s no ice in the rings, or you could mine some propellant from them. But you could fuel up in the Belt before heading on to Jupiter.
More Chelyabinsk Thoughts
…from the very thoughty Professor John Lewis.
I’ll be interested to see how long the media interest in this lasts.
Another Meteor Strike?
…in Cuba?
If true, it’s really hard to see all this as coincidental.
Have We Finally Gotten Congress’s Attention?
“Fifty years ago, we would have had no way of seeing an asteroid like this coming. Now, thanks to the discoveries NASA has made in its short history, we have known about 2012 DA14 for about a year. As the world leader in space exploration, America has made great progress for mankind,” Smith continued. “But our work is not done. We should continue to study, research, and explore space to better understand our universe and better protect our planet.”
The chairman announced a hearing in the coming weeks to examine ways to better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth.
I hope they have Ed Lu testify.
[Update a while later]
Jeff Foust has more.
Earth-Like Exoplanets
Right next door?
Maybe it’s more motivation to develop interstellar propulsion, but we’re still a long way from it, and thirteen light years is still a long way away.