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SpaceX’s attempt to launch their Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft was aborted by the computer at T-0 due to a high pressure reading on engine 5 of the first stage. The rocket’s nine main engines were ignited, but were automaticalaly shut down before liftoff. The vehicle was safed with no apparent other issues. [...]
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is now poised at the launch pad and set to open a completely new era in spaceflight. Hopes are sky high that Saturday mornings Falcon 9 launch represents the dawn of the commercial era in spaceflight akin to the startup of the commercial airline industry early in the 20th Century [...]
Activity Update: All volcanoes in the Cascade Range are at normal levels of background seismicity. These include Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams in Washington State; and Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson, Three Sis…
Seismic activity at Iliamna Volcano has been slightly above background throughout the past week. Nothing unusual was observed in mostly clear web camera and satellite images during the past week. AVO has received no reports of unusual activity at the …
Nothing unusual was observed in satellite data of Cleveland Volcano over the past week. No ash emissions or other outward signs of unrest were detected or reported during the week.
While Cleveland Volcano is active, sudden ash-producing explosions …
The old saying of the universe being stranger than we can imagine definitely applies to a newfound exoplanet orbiting a star about 1,500 light years from Earth. Researchers using the Kepler space observatory have detected what appears to be a planet about the size of Mercury literally turning to dust. A long tail of debris [...]
Saturday morning’s launch window for SpaceX’s historic test flight to the International Space Station lasts just one second. Company President Gwynne Shotwell predicted they have “better than a 50-50 shot on whether we lift off tomorrow,” she said at a press conference today, adding, “If we lift off, we’ll get to orbit.” Shotwell and NASA [...]
With less than a day left before SpaceX’s historic launch of the first commercial vehicle to the ISS, slated for 4:55 am EDT on Saturday, May 19, here’s a video of what will happen once the Falcon lifts off. (Part of me really wishes that they’ll be pumping out some dramatic music when it launches!) [...]
California-based company SpaceX was poised to launch its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station Saturday in what may be a historic mission for private spaceflight.
Researchers at Stanford University are working on solutions to the inherent difficulties of hypersonic flight — speeds of over Mach 5, or 3,000 mph (4828 km/h) — and they’ve created one amazing computer model illustrating the dynamics of air temperature variations created at those intense speeds. (…)Read the rest of The Awesome Complexity of Hypersonic [...]
Summit inflation continued; lava was generally at high levels in both summit and rift vents. At Pu`u `O`o, glow persisted from the usual sources and lava was visible in the eastern collapse pit; to the southeast, surface flows from new breakouts advan…
This great video created from images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on May 13 and 14 show Jupiter as it comes close to the Sun (from our vantage point) in a solar conjunction. But what it really looks like is the old “Space Invaders” video game, with Jupiter marching across the screen. [...]
Just look at the kind of stunning images that are buried in the archives from the Hubble Space Telescope! Here, Hubble turned its powerful wide field Advanced Camera for Surveys towards this spiral galaxy and took this close-up of its northern half. The entire galaxy, called NGC 891, stretches across 100,000 light-years and we see [...]
(Phys.org) — Researchers have known for some years that the Earth and moon were subjected to a veritable barrage of objects striking their surfaces nearly four million years ago, but less certain was whether those objects were asteroids, comets or eve…
(Phys.org) — This is a composite of a series of images photographed from a mounted camera on the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, from approximately 240 miles above Earth.
Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris — much like the tail…
The short answer? Really big. The long answer? Really, really big. (…)Read the rest of How Big Are Sunspots? (258 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: active region, CME, Earth, Jupiter, SDO, size, solar, solar max, sun, sunspots Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
COSMOS. Seth MacFarlane. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Need we say more? (If you DO want to find out more, read Dorothy Pomerantz’s write-up for Forbes here.) “I never met Carl Sagan, but this is my way to give something back to him for all of the things he gave to me.” – Seth MacFarlane © Jason [...]
In less than 48 hours, SpaceX is primed to make history and launch the first ever commercial rocket and spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) early Saturday morning on May 19. Following today’s Launch Readiness Review (LRR), SpaceX was just given the official “GO” from NASA to proceed with the blastoff of the Falcon [...]
There’s a great reason to look up this weekend and hope for clear skies! On May 20-21 an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from a 300 kilometer-wide track that crosses eastern Asia, the northern Pacific Ocean and the western United States. An annular eclipse means the Moon will not cover the Sun [...]
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Competition is vital to the race among private companies to replace the space shuttle, NASA said Thursday, after Congress called for the US space agency to fund a single company.
Minor steam and gas plumes were observed in partly cloudy satellite images during the past week. The USGS received no further reports of unrest or activity at Pagan volcano.
Pagan Volcano is not monitored with ground-based geophysical instrumentation …
Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s proposed FINESSE space telescope may not hunt for exoplanets, but it will find out what they’re made of. (…)Read the rest of JPL Wants To FINESSE Info From Exoplanets (236 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Post tags: exoplanets, FINESSE, JPL, planets, space telescope, [...]
UN members on Thursday took their first steps in a marathon to negotiate a new global pact by 2015 that for the first time will place rich and poor under a common legal regime to tackle climate change.
Japan joined the commercial space race Friday after its workhorse rocket put a paid-for South Korean satellite into orbit, pitting the country against Russia and Europe in the competition for customers.
(AP) — And the heat goes on. Forecasters predict toasty temperatures will stretch through the summer in the U.S. And that’s a bad sign for wildfires in the West.
Seismic activity at Iliamna Volcano remains slightly above background. Nothing unusual was observed in web camera and satellite images over the past 24 hours. AVO has received no reports of unusual activity.
The current activity at Iliamna does not i…
Nothing unusual was observed in satellite data of Cleveland Volcano over the past 24 hours. No ash emissions detected or reported.
While Cleveland Volcano is active, sudden ash-producing explosions are possible at any time. Associated ash clouds co…
If a portion of Earth underwent a major cataclysm, how long would it take for life to recover? The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens is giving scientists a an unprecedented opportunity to witness a recovery from devastation, as the eruption leveled the surrounding forest, blasted away hundreds of meters of the mountain’s summit, and [...]
(Phys.org) — A McGill-led research team using the Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along with a third cluster, will smash …
Researcher Jinha Lee at MIT has developed a remarkable way to interact with computers — via a programmable, intelligent and gravity-defying metal ball. The concept, called “ZeroN”, is demonstrated in the video above. Fascinating! (…)Read the rest of An Anti-Gravity User Interface (188 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 10 [...]
DI inflation continued; lava was generally at high levels in both summit and rift vents. At Pu`u `O`o, glow persisted from the usual sources and lava was visible in the eastern collapse pit; to the southeast, surface flows from new breakouts advanced …
Located high in the mountains of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the enormous telescopes of the European Southern Observatory have been providing astronomers with unprecedented views of the night sky for 50 years. ESO’s suite of telescopes take advantage of the cold, clear air over the Atacama, which is one of the driest places on Earth. But [...]
Lake Mead, on the Colorado River, is the largest reservoir in the United States, but users are consuming more water than flows down the river in an average year, which threatens the water supply for agriculture and households. To solve this imbalance s…
We’ve shared the images and a previous timelapse of Earth’s northern hemisphere, but now here’s a breath-taking timelapse of the entire blue (and green!) marble as seen from Russia’s Elektro-L weather-forecasting satellite, orbiting at a geostationary height of about 36,000 km (22,300 miles). This new video was created by James Drake using some of the [...]
(Phys.org) — Jay Pasachoff, Director of Hopkins Observatory, Chair of the Astronomy Department at Williams College and Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy, has written a commentary piece published in the journal Nature, urging stargazers everywhere …
The crew aboard the International Space Station is now back to a compliment of six. New Expedition 31 crew members Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin docked and have now been welcomed on board the ISS after the hatches opened Thursday at 08:10 UTC (4:10 a.m. EDT). They docked to the Poisk module at [...]
Tiny pieces of plastic contaminate almost every sea in the world. Now scientists have found that marine creatures like fish and birds are eating this microscopic waste, which may be harming their health.
Our friend Will Gater from the BBC’s Sky At Night Magazine had the chance to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility that is building the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope. You’ll meet MIRI inside clean room at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, before it’s packaged up and sent [...]
There have been only six Venus transits since the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century. It was not until 1761 that the transit of Venus on June 6th was observed as part of the first ever international scientific observation project, instigated by Edmond Halley. Astronomers across the globe viewed the transit and [...]
(Phys.org) — Curtin University researchers have used computational fluid dynamics and powerful supercomputers to create new models for understanding and predicting coral bleaching.
(Phys.org) — After spending 19 weeks working in one place while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is on the move again. The winter worksite was on the north slope of an outcrop cal…
