British Scientists' Search For Alien Life Renewed With UK SETI Research Network
UK scientists are stepping up their efforts to search for alien life, forming the United Kingdom Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (UK SETI) Research Network. Academics from various British institutions have banded together to form a "small but active group of SETI researchers in the UK, who need a forum to discuss their work."
#NRMPresents 'Pocket Spacecraft.' Send Your Own Spacecraft To The Moon
We've become closer to space than we could ever imagine recently. Through the likes of SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, it's fair to say the idea of taking the kids on a holiday excursion to deep space is becoming less far-fetched as the years pass by. However a recently launched Kickstarter, called Pocket Spacecraft, project doesn't hope to get you into "space tourism," rather give all backers their own "personalised spacecraft" to send into orbit.
'Lone Signal.' Start-Up Transmits Your Tweets To Outerspace
What is out there? Now you can try and talk to extra-terrestrial live, as New York-based Lone Signal is sending your online messages into space. Simply submit your message (about the length of a tweet) and they will take care of the rest, broadcasting it 17 light years away to the Gilese 526 Solar System via the Jamesburg Earth Station in Carmel Valley, CA.
Astronaut Search For Televised One-Way Trip To Mars Will Begin By July
After launching earlier this year, Dutch non-profit organisation Mars One has begun accepting applications for a one-way trip to Mars. They aim to find four astronauts throughout a two year, televised search for Red Planet explorers, starting this summer.
ESA Develops App That Turns Your Drone Into A Spacecraft
The Parrot drone quadcopter is a commercially-available drone notable for the fact that it can be controlled with an iOS Device, and now the European Space Agency is using this to help simulate docking with a virtual space station.
Meteor Explosion Hits Russia
A meteor exploded 10,000 metres above Russia this morning, breaking up and showering the Ural Mountains with fragments. Reports say around 400 people have been injured.
'ATHLETE.' NASA's Next Robot Walker To Build A Moon Base
In NASA’s continued ambition to further space exploration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has designed the next rover to build and supply a future lunar base. The ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) is designed to tackle any terrain the moon could throw at it, while transporting tools, equipment and personnel in the process.
Astronomers Discover The Largest Structure In The Universe
An international team of astronomers, led by academics from the University of Central Lancashire has found "the largest known structure in the universe." To put its size into perspective, it would take 4 billion years for a vehicle travelling at the speed of light just to cross it.
NASA Announces Multi-Year Mars Program. New Rover Mission In 2020
NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new "robotic science rover" set to launch in 2020, and the launch of two spacecraft to research the atmosphere of the red planet, with a view to commence in 2013.
SpaceX Founder Reveals Plans To Start A Colony On Mars
Fresh from becoming the first private US company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, the billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is now eyeing even further afield. According to Space.com, he's been speaking about his plans to start-up a colony (of around 80,000 people) on Mars in the not-too-distant future, with tickets to the planet likely to cost around half a million dollars each.
'Diamond Planet' Discovered By Researchers At Yale
Get ready to grab your trusty pickaxes, new research led by Yale University indicates the planet last year assumed to have a similar chemical make-up to Earth is in fact a diamond planet; home to graphite, diamond and iron rather than water and granite. At least a third of the planet’s mass – the equivalent of three Earth masses – could be solely diamond, according to the study.
The World’s Most Powerful Lasers Set To Tear Apart The Vacuum Of Space-Time Itself
Hoping to conjure enough energy that it ought to be able to pull “virtual” particles out of the vacuum of space-time – quantum mechanics implies that space-time can never truly be ‘empty’ – the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project is an undeniably tantalising (yet mind-numbingly complex) prospect.
Hubble Captures Deepest View Of Space Ever
What you’re seeing above is the most zoomed-in photograph ever created. Dubbed the Xtreme Deep Field (or XDF for short), the photo is a follow-up to the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field photo created late-2003 and is composited from over 10 years’ worth of data, and one that combines over 2000 images of a small window of deep space.
Warp Drive Is More Feasible Than First Thought, According To NASA Scientists
‘Warp drive’ – a concept popularised in our favourite sci-fi shows such as Star Trek – is not as unrealistic as it was first believed, according to top scientists from NASA. They say there is a distinct “hope” that we can reach faster-than-light travel in years to come following ‘breakthroughs’ in warp drive theory.
NASA's Inflatable Heat Shield Passes Its Biggest Test Yet
Having travelled to a distance some 450 kilometres above the Atlantic Ocean and outside of Earth's atmosphere, before detaching from its launch rocket, inflating itself with nitrogen and proceeding to fall through Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, NASA's test of the latest iteration of inflatable heat shield has been a huge success.
SkyCube: Crowdfunded Satellite Lets You Broadcast Tweets From Space
A Kickstarter campaign has begun to gather funding for the build and launch of the world's first socially connected nano-satellite. Going by the name of 'SkyCube,' users can view photos taken by the device in orbit and broadcast their tweets across the planet from it.
'View From The ISS At Night.' Photographer Creates Amazing Space Timelapse
Photographer Knate Myers has created a visually stunning timelapse video of Earth and space with a series of photographs he took from the International Space Station.
Here's What Jupiter Would Look Like If It Was The Same Distance From Us As Our Moon
Space is massive, we get it. In fact, to us as humans, trying to get even the faintest inclination of the scope and size of our own solar system, let alone the universe or the milky way, is a task inconceivably difficult. To make sense of it all, there's a treasure trove of information, diagrams and visualisations out there that give us a remote idea of how enormous space and its respective planets truly are. But even so, few can match this picturesque effort by Redditor jb2386.
Crowd-Funded Space Mission To Protect The Earth From Killer-Asteroids
Former NASA Astronauts and space scientists have announced their crowd-funded mission to map out the orbit of every potential earth-destroying asteroid, using a space telescope which will orbit around the sun.
Aerospace Company Selling Tickets To The Moon, A Snip At $100 Million
The Isle Of Man-based commercial aerospace company Excalibur Almaz has said it is now ready to sell tickets for a 500,000-mile round trip, six month journey to the Moon's orbit and back. Tickets for the once-in-a-lifetime journey are expected to sell for as much as $100 million, though this has yet to be confirmed, and only those in peak physical condition will be accepted to board.