NASA’s $300 million plan to send 6 probes hunting Martians by 2018

By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com

A few months ago, we heard that NASA’s determined to launch some kind of new Mars mission by 2018 regardless of budget cuts. Now a proposed plan for just such a mission has been revealed, and it’s one of the most ambitious searches for Martian life yet.

The Biological Oxidant and Life Detection (BOLD) Mission calls for six 130-pound pyramid-shaped “penetrator” probes to impact the surface of Mars at six different points, embedding themselves at least four inches into the Martian soil to search for life beneath the Red Planet’s irradiated surface. If approved, BOLD will be the first Mars mission dedicated to solely to a life search since NASA’s Viking landers in 1975, and proponents argue that this time there’s a much greater chance of conclusive results.

Former NASA scientist says Star Trek is agency’s ‘worst enemy’

By Trent Moore, Source: Blastr.com

Though science fiction can help inspire us to create and strive toward new technological breakthroughs, it can also have a decidedly negative effect, at least according to one former NASA scientist: It makes people forget that rocket science is, you know, rocket science.

Despite budget cuts, here’s how NASA plans to reach Mars by 2018

By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com

Two weeks ago, NASA’s woes got deeper when they took a 20 percent cut to their space exploration money. That money might mean we never make it to Mars, but NASA’s not giving up on the Red Planet just yet.

On Monday, the space agency announced the foundation of the Mars Program Planning Group, which will attempt to work within existing budget constraints to find a way to keep America rolling on a mission to Mars. Orlando Figueroa, the agency’s former program manager, has been appointed to lead the group.

Could NASA’s next space station be on the far side of the moon?

By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com

The bright side to not knowing what exactly will come out of NASA next is hearing about all the ambitious ideas they’re generating over there right now. Sure, some of them might never see the light of day, but that doesn’t make them any less cool. Take this idea, in which the space agency could use a certain gravitational quirk on the far side of the moon to park a long-term space presence there.

According to a memo sent out earlier this month by William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, the agency is assembling a team to explore the possibility of setting up a “human-tended waypoint” at a specific location near the far side of the moon known as “Earth-moon libration point 2.”

Space debris is making rocket launches dangerous

BY WAYNE HARRIS-WYRICK, Source: newsok.com

Last month, the International Space Station, an orbiting space laboratory as big as a football field, had to move. A piece of space junk 10 centimeters (four inches) across was aimed at it. To ensure the safety of the crew, its engines were fired for 54 seconds to move it to an orbit 1,000 feet higher.

Such is life in Earth orbit. This was the 13th time the ISS had to be moved to avoid potential damage from a collision with space debris. You wouldn’t think a structure that large would need to worry about a collision with an object that small. But in space, no one can hear you scream.

And no one can rescue you quickly. The piece of space junk was moving faster than a bullet and could have caused significant damage had it hit certain critical parts of the space station.

And that’s just one piece of space debris, one of many.

The number of known Earth-size planets in the galaxy just DOUBLED

By Jeff Spry, Source: Blastr,

The final frontier got a bit more crowded today with NASA’s cosmic discovery of two Earth-size planets. Astronomers monitoring the Kepler spacecraft found the twin orbs, one as big as Earth, the other smaller than Venus, 950 light years away from our solar system.

But don’t pack your bags quite yet—their climate is hot enough to liquefy glass.

These planets, named Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f, are too close to their star, Kepler 20, to be in the habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they’re the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed orbiting around a star like our sun outside the solar system. And since there were previously only two known Earth-size planets in the galaxy—Earth and Venus—that means their number has just doubled..

NASA ignores Arthur C. Clarke, may attempt landings on Europa

By Evan Ackerman, Source: DVICE.com;

Of all the places in our solar system (besides Earth) where life has a real shot at being lifeish, Europa is probably at the top of the list. This is why, in defiance of the warnings in 2010: Odyssey Two, NASA may send a pair of landers to Europa in 2020.

Our best guess is that Europa (one of the larger moons of Jupiter) is covered with a thick coat of ice, beneath which is a warm (or at least liquid) ocean. And if you’ve got water, and an energy source (Jupiter), all it takes is some happy little organic molecules and you’ve got life soup. And GIANT AQUATIC SPACE MONSTERS. Maybe.

Voyager 1 becomes first man-made object to taste galactic space

By Evan Ackerman, Source: Dvice.com;

The Voyager 1 space probe is currently about 11 billion miles from the sun. This is really, really far away: it’s three or four times farther away from the sun than Pluto is. Astronomers have been expecting Voyager to to make the transition between our solar system and the rest of our galaxy, and it looks like that may have just happened.

From Voyager’s distant perspective, the sun (our sun) looks like more or less any other bright star. The only way for the spacecraft to tell that it’s still (technically) within our solar system is to measure the charged particles that our sun emits, the same solar wind that causes auroras and pushes solar sails. As Voyager travels outward, the force of this wind has been slowly decreasing, and recently it’s slowed to a nearly unidentifiable trickle, signaling that Voyager is nearly beyond our sun’s influence.

NASA milestone: We’re one step closer to ‘finding Earth’s twin’

By Krystal Clark, Source: Blastr.com

Scientists are one step closer to finding a new Earth. NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first planet located within the “habitable zone.” That means its surface can hold liquid water, i.e., it could sustain life!

NASA’s calling the new planet Kepler-22b. It’s located 600 light-years away, and it’s about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. At the moment, scientists are still unsure about the planet’s composition. Yes, it can hold water, but there’s no confirmation about its surface being rocky, gaseous or even liquid. Despite the unknown, they believe finding Kepler-22b is a step in the right direction.

Kepler program scientist Douglas Hudgins said, “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin. Kepler’s results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA’s science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe.”

Speaking of Earth’s twin, Kepler-22b does share some notable similarities. It orbits a sun-like star in about 290 days, with its host star belonging to the same class as our sun, which is called G-type. Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in early February, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed.

So how does Kepler find these habitable planets? They measure dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front of, or “transit,” them. The program needs at least three transits to confirm a signal as a planet.

More info on Kepler-22b will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

NASA says it’ll start shooting stuff into space again in 2014

By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com

We’ve been going through space withdrawal since NASA retired its last space shuttle a few months ago, but relief is on the way soon. Though manned missions are still a little further in the future, the agency has announced that it plans to launch the first test of its new Orion spacecraft by 2014.

The unmanned flight—designated Exploration Flight Test (ETF) 1—will feature the first real test of the Orion craft, which was part of the Constellation program until that program was scrapped back in 2010. It’s now being retooled to fit in with NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), Constellation’s replacement that will hopefully get us to an asteroid and then on to Mars sometime in the next decade or two.