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The Federal Aviation Administration stated that the Obama administration is getting ready for a space tourism industry to takeoff in the next two years. The industry has been estimated to have the potential to be worth about a $1 billion in a decade’s time.
I was talking about how space exploration should be privatized and this seems to be what is going to happen, thankfully. Space Exploration Technologies otherwise known as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation are two privately owned companies that NASA has hired in a mission to transport cargo to the $100 billion research complex that is the International Space Station.
All this comes of the back of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic offering space rides for a very reasonable $200,000 per person. The company has already made a whopping $60M in deposits for enthusiasts who are looking for these types of rides.
The industry is relatively brand new and growing considerably. Before, it was restricted to some basic functions such as initiating a satellite. Now, there are lot of places that space flights can exploit.
Space travel is one of them and there are plans for commercial flights to go to a level of altitude – say at least 62 miles above the Earth’s surface – which will give travelers that pleasurable feeling of weightlessness for a couple of minutes or so. Furthermore, they will also get the magnificent view of our beautiful planet with the black sky of space in the background. This makes for an awesome sight and one that I would greatly like to see! 

Plans have been placed for NASA to fly a spacecraft perilously close to the Sun almost Icarus-like. Solar Probe Plus will give astronomers insights into how the Sun generates such enormous heat and the workings behind the solar winds. Additionally, the mission will serve to shed some light into the evolution of life on Earth and boost further exploration of space.

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The price tag for the mission is estimated to be about $1.2 billion and many space enthusiasts wonder if NASA should be spending the money on trying to colonize other worlds or figuring out how to get started doing so rather than a mission to the Sun. I feel that this is a legitimate question, but astrophysicists and NASA astronomers agree that the space probe will be worth the money spent in terms of the information that will be gleaned.
The Solar Probe Plus mission itself has taken awhile in materializing with it being an on again off again project for too long. There was also a debate on how to run the spacecraft with ideas of launching it in the direction of Jupiter so that the gas giant could propel it towards out Star and thereby save energy.
The decision has been to swing the space probe a few times around Venus and finally let it go towards the Sun to go around the star’s middle. The observatory material that will allow astronomers to look at almost 100 million miles of the Solar System will be a little cup sized object. It is a chest-high shelf of electronics that will fit nicely in a shoebox. 

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What gets left behind after a train wreck of intergalactic proportions? Celestial bodies run into each other all the time, but the Abell 520 cluster represents evidence of a particularly violent incident up there among the stars. It’s the result of a collision so chaotic that scientists have actually dubbed it the “Train Wreck cluster.” And it’s left quite the mystery in its wake. 

Most galaxy clusters, groups that can contain thousands of galaxies, contain lots of dark matter in addition to your normal, well-studied visible matter. We’re still fuzzy on exactly what dark matter is or why it does what it does, but we’ve been able to pin down that it interacts through gravity like normal gravity does. It just doesn’t give off any light. Scientists speculate that dark matter anchors visible matter to a specific location; wherever you see large quantities of regular matter in the cosmos, you’re going to run into a bunch of dark matter, too. In most galaxy clusters, it shows up in predictable quantities and behaves in strange but determinable ways.
Most of the time. Sometimes dark matter shows up and makes no sense at all. The center of Abell 520 is one such example. A 2007 study indicated that the center of the cluster held a gigantic core of dark matter that should have pulled in lots of visible galaxies. But scientists could see no visible matter surrounding the core. It just hung in the sky on its own, surrounded by smaller spots of dark matter that were attracting galaxies just fine. Astronomers didn’t know what to make of it, so they dismissed it as a mistake in their observations. But a new analysis with the Hubble telescope shows that there was no such mistake.
The dark core is very real. It’s there, bending light with its huge mass like any other enormous object in space. It’s just not interacting with any visible galaxies. 
There are a few possible explanations for the presence of this giant glob of heavy nothing. There could be a few very faint galaxies hanging out where the Hubble can’t see them, or dark matter might potentially be interacting with itself in ways previously thought impossible. Or we could be witnessing a weird moment in interstellar ballistics, an instance in the vast collision that we hadn’t accounted for with our understanding of how galaxies crash into each other. Scientists will be running computer simulations of the Train Wreck crash to see if there’s something they’re missing. Either we’ll discover something new about collision physics or we’ll have to investigate deeper into how dark matter operates. 

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A recent feature in KQED Quest was a pail of cold water thrown on the dreams of an blissful optimistic, myself, on the topic of interstellar travel. It’s true that my education in Newtonian physics and the realities of space travel is more wormholes and hyperdrives than astrophysics or aeronautics. Popular science fiction might lead us to believe that interstellar travel, whether by teleportation or sheer thrust, for traveling to another solar system, may be an eventuality, but as Ben Burress illustrates, that may not be so.
Burress attempted to use current markers of space technology to extrapolate the necessities in reaching the closest extrasolar planet; a gas giant orbiting Epsilon Eridani about 10.4 light-years away.
Estimating the ship to be 2000 metric tons, which is roughly the mass of the Space Station,the mathematics will not take into account the weight of the fuel needed; which as you’ll see, would be substantial. Speaking of fuel, there would need to be enough to create the amount of thrust necessary to accelerate 2,000 tons at 1 gee to achieve a high enough velocity to get to the destination. Burress estimates that 30,000 kilometers a second will get us there in 103 or 104 years. In order to reach that velocity, we would need to accelerate at 1 gee for about 35 days. That’s about 20 billion tons of rocket fuel. 20 billion tons of fuel for one 2,000 ton spaceship, and that’s just to get there…
So obviously it would take substantial amounts of energy to propel even a too-small space craft to the nearest solar system. Burress does recommend, once it’s technologically viable, antimatter fuel At the moment we don’t have the technological capability of harnessing an antimatter reaction, but when we do it would take only 5 tons of antimatter, to create the necessary energy to propel our little ship to Epsilon Eridani. Of course, once you get there you’re still just floating around a completely uninhabitable gas giant with nowhere to go. But hey, that’s interstellar travel.

Landing the rover Curiosity on the Red Planet is going to pose a serious challenge because of the nature of its atmosphere. But this Rover landing which is part of the larger Mars Science Laboratory mission has great goals namely to plan for a possible manned mission to Mars in the future and also to solve the mystery about life on Mars. Additionally, operating Curiosity on the surface of the planet will give more insights into the geology of Mars and its climate.

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I was really thrilled when the United States signed a bill two years ago permitting a manned mission to the Red Planet by the 2030s. I guess we really aren’t going to get anywhere near a space colony in my lifetime with all the difficulties that a manned mission to Mars poses. These could be anything from physical effects such as eyesight loss and exposure to high energy cosmic rays to the psychological effects of having to be away from Earth to even things like being unable to get good medical facilities.
Still, the launch of the rocket with the rover in it to Mars at the end of November last year is a significant move forward in the idea of colonizing Mars that has been around since the dawn of the twentieth century. I am eager to see the outcome of the landing of Curiosity in August of this year and I hope it will satisfy my curiosity about the planet’s evolution process, the chances of life being there or ever having existed and other things related to the Red Planet.

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For decades, scientists have believed that Mars was essentially a “dead” planet. Although the planet sports a number of enormous volcanoes, they haven’t erupted in billions of years. Even the lava flows that occasionally seem to smooth out, or cover up, Mars’ surface are hundreds of millions of years old. However, there has been some recent speculation that there may be some life in Mars yet. New technology and the HiRISE camera about the Mars Orbiter have given scientists the ability to see Mars’ surface in much clearer detail, raising questions about a recent “Marsquake”.
One of the more strikingly obvious facts is that some of the surface-smoothing lava flows are actually much younger than previously believed; 2 million years old in some cases which is near-infancy on a geological timeline. However, it’s still not enough to indicate that Mars is still generating heat under the surface. Two million years is long enough to prove extinction of a volcano, and its eruption could have been the swan song of the planet’s seismic activity.
However, thanks to the higher resolution capabilities of cameras, which are able to see objects only six feet across, scientists are now looking at boulders for evidence of seismic activity; principally rolling boulders. In the Cerberus Fossae area of Mars, near the enormous Elysium Mons, there is substantial evidence of seismic activity from rolling boulders. Following the same principle of earthquakes, which can dislodge and cause boulders to roll downhill, large Martian boulders seem to be rolling down through the Martian equivalent of sand dunes, creating long, linear trails through the dust.
That’s not to say that there couldn’t be some other reason for these migrating boulders. One hypothesis was that the boulders may have been frozen in place by ice deposits that, loosened by mid-day sunlight, allowed the boulders to tumble. Gerald Roberts, leader of a team of scientists from the University of London, tells TIME magazine, “The ice-melting hypothesis is not supported.”
The discovery of seismic activity on Mars is a significant one because it leave open the possibility that Mars may still be generating its own heat, much like the core of the Earth. If that’s true, then it’s also likely that the water beneath mars’ surface may not all be ice, but some liquid water as well. As they say, where there is water, there is life, and this opens up the possibility of some life, perhaps single-celled bacteria that excrete methane, lurking underneath.

For all you space enthusiasts out there, it was a pretty amazing view if you looked up at the sky over the weekend. There was actually a heavenly triangle that had a crescent moon at the top and the gas giant Jupiter and “Queen of the Sky” Venus forming the bases. Jupiter and Venus are in fact the brightest planets in the Solar System.

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This celestial show was on again last evening for those of who might have missed it Saturday night. The celestial show can be seen by people across the globe and it is not exclusive to viewers only in a certain location as is the case with a lot of events like this. The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury, will also be seen if you look diligently below Venus close to the horizon.

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The planets Jupiter and Venus are actually converging and what’s more they will get closer and closer in the sky as we move into March. The celestial show will go on till mid-March where there is a spectacular finale that I for one am greatly looking forward to. On March 13 and 14, Jupiter and Venus will be very close to each other. This is going to make for a gorgeous sight in the evening sky!
These planets and the Moon will continue to light up the sky and provide astronomers with a lot to observe in these next two weeks. Be sure to catch the action and a leave a comment below about the celestial show!

Space enthusiasts like me are wondering what the future of the space program is going to be like and especially with manned space flights and the chance of setting up base outside of our planet. Under the Obama administration, there really has not been much importance place on the space program and it has been dwindling.

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In comes Newt Gingrich with his pledge to have a Moon Colony by the end of his second term in office in 2020. I am not a big fan of the former Speaker and most political analysts would agree that his campaign has been mostly negative, but this really feels like music to my ears. But is it really possible is the question on everyone’s minds.
The costs are going to be too much for NASA as it is estimated that even placing a four-person station would cost about $35 billion. Additionally, astronomer Phil Plait who came up with this figure states that it would cost just over $7 billion to keep things going on the Moon base. This will be a problem to convince taxpayers to come up with that kind of money and when looking at the private sector I don’t see any investor who might be willing take this on.
Basically, the cost is a barrier but as a businessman I also like to take into account what can be gained and whether any revenue can be generated or other type of assets procured. The Moon is a great place to start mining for resources with its iron source and it also has a lot Helium-3 that can utilized to fuel clean fusion reactors. In addition to these types of resources that are not easily found on Earth, there is also the chance to really learn more and innovate in various ways.
For one thing, a lunar base experiment could teach us a lot about self-sufficiency and to see what type of technology can be developed as a result to help in saving energy and improving solar panels, etc. I think we need to get serious about not relying so much on the Earth as it is pretty obvious that at the rate of population growth and the depletion of resources, we have to start somewhere.

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The presumption in the scientific community has been that planet’s are like rare little gems, serendipitous collections of mass around those stars lucky enough to have them. Our solar system was unusually lucky, housing eight of these fantastic solar satellites. Recent evidence, however, seems to point to planets being a much more ubiquitous occurrence in the universe than previously thought. In fact, on average every sun has at least one planet, unveiling a Milky Way galaxy that is home to somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion planets.
These new findings are from a six-year survey of millions of stars. Each star was investigated using a network of professional and amateur astronomers using telescopes in our southern hemisphere. They locate the planets using a detection method called gravitational microlensing. Planets are not necessarily visible, even to today’s powerful telescopes. However, the light of their host stars are, and the impact of gravitational fields on that light is very telling. A star’s solar output is amplified by the star’s own gravitational field. The distorted array of that light is evidence of the star’s own gravitational field, but if there are extrasolar planets orbiting that star, their gravitational fields will further widen that lens. Researchers examined 100 million stars every night during the lifespan of the study, and noted those with promising light-curve amplifications. Between 2002 and 2007, Popular Science notes, 500 stars were found to have these kinds of light amplifications and in ten such stars it was possible to actually see the planet’s gravitational effect on the star’s output. Statistically, one in six had a planet with Jupiter-like mass, three had Neptune-like planets, and two-thirds had a super earth, or large rocky planets.
Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, Seth Shostak used the following simile to illustrate just how proliferous planets actually are: “Planets are like bunnies; you don’t just get one, you get a bunch, so really, the number of planets in the Milky Way is probably like five or 10 times the number of stars. That’s something like a trillion planets.” The sheer number of planets within our galaxy, although not a guarantee that many will be habitable by human colonists, nonetheless place the odds in our favor. “It’s not unreasonable at this point to say there are literally billions of habitable worlds in our galaxy,” Shestak says. However, other astronomers are not so sure, according to Popular Science, saying that increasing the number of planets does not necessarily increase the odds that those planets are habitable.

Before I go further, I want to point out an ad that I shared on another blog on this network of sites. Note the point where Kobe Bryant says that Richard Branson “owns space” at the 0:18 mark. I found it amazing as I was just talking about that not too long ago in this blog.
Anyway, NASA has found that 2011 has been the 9th warmest year since 1880. I live in Minneapolis and I found it strange to have no snow on Christmas and New Year’s Day with temperatures in the 40-50 F range too. Actually, this is just one of those mild winters that occur in Minnesota from time to time.
But in all seriousness, this is actually part of a trend with 9 of the 10 warmest years happening after the turn of the millennium. I am not jumping on the whole global warming bandwagon, but the data seems to point to it. Meteorologists now anticipate the temperature to increase consistently and this should be a good juncture to discuss NASAs test chamber on ‘climate change’ that mimic the toxic conditions of our neighboring planet Venus.

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This really goes back to what Carl Sagan talked about in the “Heaven and Hell” episode on the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage regarding what people could learn from Venus. There are a lot of lessons that we can glean from this simulation by NASA as many scientists including Sagan believe that Venus was just like Earth several billion years ago. Now Venus is composed of 98 percent carbon dioxide and studying how this happened will help in thwarting a similar fate for our world.