Skylon, a revolutionary UK spacecraft which could take adventurers to Earth’s stratosphere in just 15 minutes or fly travelers to Australia in four hours, will get $90 million from the government. The challenge is to cut the cost of space travel.
To boldly go where only Astrophysicians have gone before. What I find interesting (and can roughly understand) in Astronomy & Space exploration these days.
At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Katie Bouman predicting what happened last week back in 2017.
What if there was another Earth? And on that Earth was another you? And that other you, despite being genetically identical, turned out to be quite different? That’s the premise for the new STARZ series, Counterpart.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
A good recap of the different theories on how there could be universes parallel to ours.
The hotly anticipated total solar eclipse passed over the United States on Monday (Aug 21). Heading southeast, it passed over a narrow and long swath of the country. Also making an appearance—as it often does for astrophotographers—was the International Space Station. Captured by NASA photographer Joel Kowsky while looking up from Banner, Wyoming, perfectl
Yesterday, scientists “switched on” a global array of telescopes with the goal of imaging the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Even
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
It's not a small logistic and we're not sure what there is to see - black? Nothingness? But it's fascinating to me that these objects which have been predicted by theory are now close to being observed.
The planets orbit a dwarf star named Trappist-1, about 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, from Earth. That is quite close in cosmic terms, and by happy accident, the orientation of the orbits of the seven planets allows them to be studied in great detail.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Fantastic discovery by NASA. These planets are not gas giants but rocky planets like our own and some of them are in the habitable zone where water can exist in liquid form.
Elon Musk's aerospace company just made a big move to envelop the planet in high-speed internet coverage.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
With a fleet of 4,425 satellites. No less. Which means more than the total number of satellites currently in Space.
Ambitious program but great goal that would provide 200x more speed than what connected internet users get on average and perhaps more importantly internet access to areas that are not covered and potentially to the 4.2 billion of people who are not online yet.
Elon Musk's proposal is probably super ambitious to some but his speech this week has the merit of making things pretty simple and straightforward in terms of what's at stake and how we can address the opportunity.
The scope of his own plan is limited to transportation so he doesn't describe what Mars colonies will look like nor what people will do there. But that's the very interesting take-away to me: rather than attempting to plan everything in a typical government (or soviet-style?) way, he's proposing a platform for other entrepreneurs to build on and leverage the opportunities.
He's not saying "I've planned everything and you should all do what I say". He's focusing on solving the biggest hurdle (affordable transportation) and leaves the rest open. He makes the point that in the 1850's, no one lived in California but that the smart decision made was precisely to build a railroad to California... which became the most populous states a few decades later and economic leadership in technology and entertainment.
So in the same spirit, he's proposing a plan to reduce transportation cost to Mars to $100k/person with enough bandwidth to ship 1M people there over 40-100 years.
Are we alone in the universe? To answer this question, astronomers have been using a variety of methods in the past decades to search for habitable planets and for the signals from extraterrestrial observers.
The first part of this venture has been highly successful: More than 2,000 planets around distant stars — so called exoplanets — have been found so far. The second part, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), has not yet been successful.
Learning the lessons from exoplanet search to transform the SETI program could lead to a much more focused search. And therefore more successful. Looking at the limited area of the sky where aliens are the most likely to be listening to us already... as they might track us the way we track exoplanets.
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured NASA's most detailed image of the Pillars of Creation that is helping scientists better understand how stars form.
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NASA’s newest planet-hunting spacecraft has already spied and confirmed a third world outside our Solar System — just three months into the vehicle’s science operations. This newly discovered planet, or exoplanet, is relatively close by, orbiting a small star just 53 light-years away.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
How NASA changed its approach to discovering exoplanets by transitioning from Kepler to TESS, looking at stars near ours so we can study them in greater details.
Last month, the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii spotted something strange zooming through our solar system. It turned out to be a visitor from beyond, unlike anything astronomers have seen before.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Unlike what CNN suggests in its title it's not the first to pass through but the first we ever observed. I hadn't realized there are 8 to 10 a year doing so - debris from other, remote solar systems.
Cool demo of what reusable rocket technology could mean outside of space travel. And a way to pay back for the space program through the huge impact it could have on the economy.
NASA's Cassini probe is plunging to its death. The nuclear-powered spacecraft has orbited Saturn for 13 years, and sent back hundreds of thousands of images. The photos include close-ups of the gaseous giant, its famous rings, and its enigmatic moons - including Titan, which has its own atmosphere, and icy Enceladus, which has a subsurface ocean that could conceivably harbour microbial life.
SpaceX has plans to send two private citizens around the Moon, CEO Elon Musk announced today. It will be a private mission with two paying customers, not NASA astronauts, who approache
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
Not sure if this will happen or be on time but great way to capture imagination.
Back in 1995, astronomers found the first exoplanet orbiting a star like our Sun. Now, using a novel technique, we’ve detected water in its atmosphere.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
This is on a gas planet the type of Jupiter. So unlikely to be a second home but I was fascinated to learn our detection method can now spot that.
Scientists have heard hugely unusual messages from deep in space that they think are coming from aliens.
Guillaume Decugis's insight:
PR stunt or hard science? Too early to say but fascinating to see if we'll be able to prove that in the next future. Let alone translate what they say.
Simulated Moon and Martian gravity is way more fun for skating than no gravity at all. But you only get to experience those three times for 30 seconds each on the “Vomit Comet.” The rest of the flight is 12 zer0-gravity parabolas — each 30 seconds in duration. I did my first boneless backflip on our last martian gravity experience, and I was just starting to get the hang of doing ollies in slow motion.
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Nice project. Competition for Virgin Galactic? Or the future of air travel?