27.02.11

FYI: How Would NASA Rescue An Astronaut Who Floated Away From The International Space Station?

It's never happened, and NASA feels confident that it never will. For one thing, astronauts generally don't float free. Outside the ISS, they're always attached to the spacecraft with a braided steel tether, which has a tensile strength of 1,100 pounds. If it's a two-person
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Final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery Now Delayed Until Feb. 3 At The Earliest

Another day, another piece of bad news for space shuttle Discovery. The aging shuttle will launch on its last mission no earlier than Feb. 3, NASA announced today. Mission
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NASA's Newly Discovered Arsenic-Loving Bacteria Are Fascinating, but Not Aliens [Updated + Video]

So everyone chill out. It does raise interesting questions for alien life-hunters, however Biologists have isolated a bacterium that can use a deadly chemical in place of one of life's key building blocks, in a finding NASA says could have major implications for astrobiology
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Blurry Nebula Image Marks Success for Flying Telescope, NASA Says

After months of calibration and testing, NASA's flying telescope made its first excursion this morning, and the space agency is looking forward to analyzing the
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IBM Unveils Nanophotonic Chips that Could Lead the Exascale Computing Revolution

IBM is prepped to lead the way into the next era of exascale computing, at least if the technology they showed off at a convention today in Chiba, Japan can live up to
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In Flyby of Saturn's Moon Rhea, Cassini Probe Gets First Whiff of Non-Earthly Oxygen

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken a breath of oxygen while passing over the icy surface of Saturn's second-largest moon, marking the first time a spacecraft has directly sampled oxygen
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Lockheed Martin Proposes Manned Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon

The Obama administration may have axed NASA's ambitious manned moon exploration plans for even an even more ambitious deep space exploration agenda, but for those developing the technologies that will one day take us to deep space the moon is just too ripe a testing ground
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NASA's Tasty-Sounding O/OREOS Mission Launches Today to Study Life's Origins In Outer Space

A nanosatellite no bigger than a loaf of bread -- and named after cookies -- is set to launch today to study the origins of life in the universe. Its name stands for Organism/Organic
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Proposed Hopping Mars Rover Will Harvest Its Own Fuel

The next generation of Mars rovers may not rove at all, instead bouncing around the planet while harvesting carbon dioxide for fuel. A new Mars hopper concept involves a carbon
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Budget Cuts And Outsourced Training Could Put NASA's Astronauts At Risk

When NASA retires its fleet of space shuttles next year, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft will become the only means of transporting people to the International Space Station. American astronauts have trained part-time on Soyuz craft in Moscow since the early 1990s, but
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Now Discovery Has a Fuel Leak; Delayed Another 48 Hours At Least

Perhaps its sentimentality that's making Discovery stall its 39th and final mission. Scheduled to launch at 3:04 p.m. today after four days of delays for reasons ranging from helium and nitrogen leaks to voltage
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Russia building new $900-million-dollar spaceport for commercial space industry

As for NASA's future continue to generate gridlock in Washington DC, the Russians are investing $800 million in a new spaceport in the country's far eastern region. The spaceport, which will relieve
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Attention, Supervillains and Climate Engineers: The U.N. May Soon Forbid You To Block Out the Sun

Of all of C. Montgomery Burns's nefarious dealings on The Simpsons, perhaps none sticks in the public consciousness like the time he attempted to use a massive shade to block out the sun (most notably because doing so led to his being shot by a vigilante baby
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Robonaut Is Getting Ready For His Big Trip to Space

He has been crated up and shipped to Kennedy Space Center. At the Space Station Processing Facility there, he is going to be carefully packed into his SLEEPR -- the Structural Launch Enclosure to Effectively Protect Robonaut. At over 220 kilograms, the
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Budget Cuts And Outsourced Training Could Put NASA's Astronauts At Risk

When NASA retires its fleet of space shuttles next year, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft will become the only means of transporting people to the International Space Station. American astronauts have trained part-time on Soyuz craft in Moscow since the early 1990s, but
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Martian Environment Is Ideally Suited For Crop Farming, Study Says

If we ever decide to colonize Mars, it might be fairly simple to grow crops in that red soil, according to a
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Who Owns the Moon's Water? Future Moon Mining Missions May Face Legal Disputes

Would-be moon miners will need good lawyers if they want to keep the lunar resources they're harvesting, according to space policy experts. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 appears to permit extraction of lunar water and other resources, but it's not clear
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In Case of Asteroid Threat, Deploy Tug-Sats and Heavy Rockets, Apollo Astronaut Says

As evidenced by NASA's confirmation last week of an asteroid collision observed by Hubble, there are plenty of objects careening around the solar system
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NASA's Dawn spacecraft sets record for acceleration in space

NASA has a fine track record when it comes to winning space races, so it should come as no surprise that the space agency's Dawn spacecraft has set a new record for velocity change produced by spacecraft
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NASA Solar Probe Sets Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Literally

In a mission to learn more about the sun's inner workings, NASA is planning to launch a specially shielded spacecraft in 2018 that will plunge into the solar atmosphere. The car-sized Solar Probe Plus will explore an area just 4 million miles from the star's surface,
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A DIY synthetic aperture radar system for $250

For about $280, you can make your very own space-age spy tech, following an MIT professor's instructions. It can
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After cosmic collision, a jellyfish galaxy with tentacles of stars

A 3.2-million-kilometre-per-hour collision in a galaxy cluster 54 million light years away has left us with this amazing image captured by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer
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NASA's orbiting carbon observatory replacement mission to launch in 2013

In February 2009, NASA launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a research spacecraft that crashed into the ocean shortly after launch. The project, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was designed to map the distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere.
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NASA introducing "Moonbase Alpha", a 3D game set on the moon

A meteor strikes, damaging solar arrays and life support systems, and as you watch the billowing dust cloud move ominously toward your lunar camp, you have to restore critical systems and oxygen flow. Starting July 6, a new NASA video game will let you save the day, in
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NASA announces dates for last two shuttle missions

Choking back a tear, NASA has announced the dates of the final missions to be made by the Space Shuttle. Discovery will lift off on November 1, for a 10-day mission carrying parts to the International Space Station. After that, February 26, 2020, will mark
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New generation of supersonic jets aims to get rid of the boom

True to its aeronautic roots, NASA is evaluating a new generation of supersonic airplane designs to see whether they can reduce sonic-boom levels. Boeing
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Aerodynamic rocket nozzle tech could be repurposed to efficiently capture CO2

It's not exactly rocket science, but the same company that builds the rocket boosters that launch the Space Shuttles into orbit has a novel idea for bringing down the cost of carbon capture. Aerospace and defense company ATK wants to pressurize the exhaust emissions
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After 12,000 Days in Space, Voyager 1 Heads for the Solar System Boundary

Next time you're marveling at the fact that Spirit and Opportunity have been roving Mars for over six years now, ponder this: the two Voyager spacecraft
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Loaner NASA Rover Helps Solve Cold Murder Case in California

Add gumshoe detective to NASA's resume. Last year, scientists from the space agency working with the US Geological Survey and the Menlo Park District Attorney's office solved
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Juno Probe, Built to Study Jupiter's Radiation Belt, Gets A Titanium Suit of Interplanetary Armor

Image: Armored Spacecraft Workers place the special radiation vault for NASA's Juno spacecraft onto the propulsion module. Juno's radiation
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