NASA’s plans to ship people to the moon and some day Mars are very much up in the air these days, with debate over Barack Obama’s plans for the space agency a hot water cooler topic in the aerospace industry. Budget battles aside, one new study asks, how should these future astronauts steer their way around our solar system?
The nation’s space program is approaching a critical crossroads, one that will make 2009 the year in which a new presidential administration stays or alters the course of the U.S. human spaceflight program.
A swarm of comets that smacked North America 12,900 years ago wiped out the wooly mammoth and early Native American cultures, according to a soil study released Thursday.
Within these sky-high walls, some of history’s most storied flying machines were readied for the air: biplanes of wood, wire and canvas; Machine Age bombers; Mercury spacecraft; and just about every U.S. fighter in World War II.
NASA’s new report detailing exactly how the space shuttle Columbia astronauts died in that 2003 tragedy may be the final word in that story, but it also opens a new chapter that ponders the agency’s future in the Obama administration.
A group of astronomers is planning to get the ruling that Pluto is not the ninth planet of our solar system, overturned.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), ruled in 2006 that there are no longer nine planets in the Solar System, and downgraded Pluto to the lowly status of a “dwarf planet”.
Here are some of the more noteworthy sky events that will take place this year. SPACE.com’s weekly Night Sky column will provide more extensive coverage of each event as they draw closer.
STONE circles on Mars are prompting a rethink about the planet’s ancient climate.
Using cameras on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Matt Balme of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and his colleagues mapped the Elysium Planitia, a region near the equator. They saw rings up to 23 metres across made up of stones sorted by size into concentric bands.
IT IS a common complaint these days: things are just not made to last any more.
But it is one gripe that does not hold water on the red planet. The warranty on NASA’s two, six-wheeled Martian rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - guaranteed their survival for only 90 days on the planet’s dusty surface, and promised that they would drive a mere 600 metres.
Nearly all massive galaxies have undergone at least one major merger since the Universe was 6 billion years old, according to the largest survey of their shape and structure to date.
President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.
Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.
Four hundred-year-old light from the Pleiades star cluster will be used early this year to initiate a virtual ribbon-cutting in the Second Life online community for the International Year of Astronomy — aimed at bringing astronomy to more of the general public.
Utahns willing to brave freezing temperatures early Saturday morning could see up to 100 shooting stars in an hour, but clouds likely will obscure the view.
The Quadrantid meteor shower is set to peak at 6 a.m., but meteors will start streaking across the sky after midnight and build up until dawn, said Patrick Wiggins, NASA’s solar system ambassador to Utah.
Veteran astronaut and former NASA associate administrator Scott “Doc” Horowitz has been circulating an online petition since Erev Christmas to help save the job of NASA administrator Michael Griffin, a Bush appointee, once Obama takes office.
The solar system came into unprecedented focus in 2008. Various spacecraft revealed previously unseen swathes of Mercury, found a ring around one of Saturn’s moons, and landed squarely on a patch of Martian ice.
Late on Christmas Eve, one last wish was sent, by e-mail: Please let NASA Administrator Michael Griffin keep his job. It was from his wife.
Rebecca Griffin, who works in marketing, sent her message with the subject line “Campaign for Mike” to friends and family. It asked them to sign an online petition to President-elect Barack Obama “to consider keeping Mike Griffin on as NASA Administrator.”
In a class picture at Imperial Estates Elementary, a young Phillip Cunio proudly wears an astronaut’s blue flight suit.
Fast forward to this year, and it’s clear the 2001 Titusville High valedictorian’s fascination with space has not diminished.
Columbia’s astronauts could not have survived the 2003 disintegration of their spaceship, but lessons learned in an exhaustive study of what happened to them in their final seconds could make the difference between life and death in less severe accidents on future space flights.
New pictures of Saturn released Tuesday reveal the ringed planet in all its splendor.
The Cassini space probe snapped a series of images during two hours in July that have been put together to create a full, natural color view of the planet, its rings, and six of its moons.
With 2009 just over the horizon, stargazers around the world are busy preparing for the International Year of Astronomy. A staggering 135 nations are collaborating to bring the Universe closer to Earth. Events and activities will take place over the coming 365 days and beyond, in a spectacle of cosmic proportions.