…since the last X Prize: SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 13, 2007 – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded […]
Thanks to a tip I saw somewhere on the net today and the ever-helpful information at Heavens Above, I knew that the International Space Station (ISS) would be passing overhead here in Denver around 9:00 pm MDT. And sure enough, just before 9:00, a very bright dot appeared in the northwest sky, slowly heading toward […]
And here it is: (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.) This planet is some 63 light-years away from us. It is one of the so-called “hot Jupiter” planets, that is, a gas giant that is in a very close, tight orbit around its star. You can find more details here. Yeah, I know there’s not a lot of […]
Of course, I blame Bush: As seen in Figure 1, Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004. As they say on Neptune, global warming has become an inconvenient truth. But with no one to […]
No, not on Earth – on Mars. A growing number of people are raising a stink about global warming, claiming that mankind is causing the world we all share to heat, by some claims, to a point that will cause a climatic catastrophe. Now a bit of a hint from Mars: Mars, too, appears to […]
This is just too cool: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to identify signatures of molecules in their atmospheres. The landmark achievement is a significant step toward being able to detect possible life on rocky exoplanets and comes years before […]
Up Earth Creek without a paddle
I am a child of the Space Age (or, to use Robert Heinlein’s phrase from his ‘Future History‘ timeline, the False Dawn of Space Travel). I had just turned 8 years old when President Kennedy in May 1961 issued his famous challenge: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this […]
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