On Tuesday, Scientists will present their additional findings from the rover’s mission. Curiosity landed on the Martian surface four years ago to explore sediments rising from a massive crater impact area. The primary goal of the Curiosity rover was to determine if the planet, which has the most similarities to Earth in our solar system, contained the chemical ingredients and suitable environments to support microbial life.

There is strong evidence that Mars was once inhabitable, and still might be today. Scientists are using the rover to learn more about what is, or what was alive at one point. They are searching for any preserved evidence of life. Organics were a key focus of the search, which has led to the discovery of a wide distribution of organic matter across the planet.

Scientists don’t yet know the source of the organics, or how they managed to survive in a harsh radioactive environment. The samples that were drilled out from Martian rocks by the Curiosity rover were chemically analyzed. They are either biological or geologic in origin, but their existence has implications in both discovering prior life forms, and supporting future life sustainability.

At the California Institute of Technology, geologist John Grotzinger was conducting related research and found multiple examples of primary igneous minerals being altered during Curiosity’s slow climb up Mount Sharp. Grotzinger believes the sedimentary basin is a chemical reactor, converting primary igneous minerals, under different circumstances, into different minerals. At the National Academy of Sciences workshop, Grotzinger said “We’re not sure what all this means, but it’s pretty exciting for habitability.”

Scientists have also progressed on locating potential rock types that could preserve evidence of past life. Grotzinger believes the most promising find was a silica-rich rock that is chemically similar to early rocks on Earth, which contained fossil cells. Silica has been the great mineral of the Earth, surviving everything. Silica has strong preservation capabilities — and is apparently being made on Mars.

The Curiosity rover, while climbing up Mount Sharp, also uncovered increasingly enriched concentrations of boron inside of rock fractures. Scientists will present new results from Curiosity’s mission at the American Geophysical Union conference, which is scheduled to take place this week in San Francisco.

Sources:

Seeker.com

DailyCaller.com

Article by Jeff Foust

In a statement posted on the SpaceX website Jan. 2, the company said the explosion was caused by the failure of one of three helium tanks, known as composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), inside the liquid oxygen tank in the rocket’s second stage. The company had previously indicated that a COPV failure was a leading cause of the accident.

Each COPV is made of an aluminum liner surrounded by a carbon composite overwrap. Other COPVs recovered from the Falcon 9 showed buckling of their liners, although what caused the buckling isn’t stated. [Dramatic Video of SpaceX’s Rocket Explosion]

SpaceX said that the buckling, in and of itself, did not cause the tanks to fail. Instead, the company believes the buckles created voids between the liner and composite overwrap where liquid oxygen could pool. “When pressurized, oxygen pooled in this buckle can become trapped; in turn, breaking fibers or friction can ignite the oxygen in the overwrap, causing the COPV to fail,” the company said. The temperature of the helium in the COPV is also cold enough to freeze some of the oxygen, exacerbating the problem.

In its statement, SpaceX said that investigators did not find a single, most likely cause of the failure, but all the potential causes were similar. “The investigation team identified several credible causes for the COPV failure, all of which involve accumulation of super chilled [liquid oxygen] or [solid oxygen] in buckles under the overwrap,” the company stated.

SpaceX’s return-to-flight plans call for changes in procedures for fueling the rocket rather than design changes to the COPVs. According to the company, it will use warmer helium in the COPVs and also change the process for loading helium into those tanks “to a prior flight proven configuration based on operations used in over 700 successful COPV loads.”

The company didn’t state what effect these changes would have on launch preparations or vehicle performance. The current version of the Falcon 9 uses so-called “super-cooled” propellants, where liquid oxygen is chilled to near the freezing point to increase its density and improve the vehicle’s performance. Those propellants are loaded into the Falcon 9 shortly before launch.

Those procedural changes are intended only to be short-term solutions. “In the long term, SpaceX will implement design changes to the COPVs to prevent buckles altogether, which will allow for faster loading operations,” the company stated, but did not give a schedule for making those design changes.

The short-term fixes, though, should allow the Falcon 9 to resume launches that were put on hold after the Sept. 1 pad explosion. That includes the first of seven launches of Iridium Next satellites, which is now scheduled for no earlier than Jan. 8 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

“Iridium is pleased with SpaceX’s announcement on the results of the Sept. 1 anomaly as identified by their accident investigation team, and their plans to target a return to flight on Jan. 8 with the first Iridium Next launch,” Iridium said in a Jan. 2 statement.

That schedule is pending the issuance of a launch license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has not granted that license yet, but sources say the FAA has received and is reviewing SpaceX’s report on the pad accident. In its statement, SpaceX noted that the FAA “provided oversight and coordination for the investigation” as part of the investigation team.

Should SpaceX successfully return to flight with the Iridium mission, its next launch is expected to be of the EchoStar-23 communications satellite later in January. That launch will be the first SpaceX mission from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a former space shuttle pad that SpaceX is leasing primarily for Falcon 9 launches of its Crew Dragon spacecraft and launches of its Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX will be using the pad for other Falcon 9 launches because of damage sustained at Space Launch Complex 40 in the September pad explosion.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

Read more at: space.com

Indeed, the “experts” of science are so often wrong that it makes their arrogance laughable, and today we have yet another example of an emerging, unexplained technology that’s sending physicists back to the drawing board to rewrite the supposed “laws” of how the universe works.

The technology in question is called the EM Drive, and it’s an “impossible” spacecraft propulsion device that produces real thrust while emitting nothing (i.e. no exhaust) and having no moving parts. “The EM Drive (Electro Magnetic Drive) uses electromagnetic microwave cavities to directly convert electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant,” explains Hacked.com. “[Harold G. White, a scientist] proposes that the EM Drive’s thrust is due to virtual particles in the quantum vacuum that behave like propellant ions in magneto-hydrodynamical propulsion systems, extracting ‘fuel’ from the very fabric of space-time and eliminating the need to carry propellant.”

Invented by engineering pioneer Roger Shawyer nearly 15 years ago, the EM Drive has long been ridiculed by “mainstream” scientists in much the same way that cold fusion (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) have also been widely ridiculed by hot fusion academics.

Yet Shawyer may have the last laugh after all. Martin Tajmar, the Director of Institute and Head of Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, has just reproduced the thrust measurements of the seemingly “impossible” thrust device, conducting his experiment in a vacuum that mimics the environment of space. He presented his findings at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition in 2015. You can see his EM Drive talk listed in the event brochure at this link.

EMDrive appears to violate the laws of known physics… but it also appears to work

“Our measurements reveal thrusts as expected from previous claims after carefully studying thermal and electromagnetic interferences,” says the science paper. Tests were also conducted in a high vacuum: “We used this setup to test an EMDrive for the first time in high vacuum down to 4×10 -6 mbar observing similar thrusts (although at somewhat lower power levels) ruling out any air influence in this configuration.”

As the document explains, numerous experiments have already apparently confirmed the thrust operation of this “impossible” engine that appears to violate the known laws of physics:

Some years ago, Shawyer claimed to have invented yet another type of propellantless propulsion system called EMDrive that only uses onboard electrical power similar to the photon rocket, but with orders of magnitude more thrust and without the need of another satellite. If true, this could certainly revolutionize space travel.

It must be noted that Shawyers analysis and claims are highly controversial (e.g. Ref. 9) as this would obviously violate the conservation of momentum (pushing against itself) following his theory. Aside from the theoretical concept, most interesting are the experimental claims that have been published to date. Shawyer tested the

EMDrive on a balance in the upwards and downwards direction observing weight changes (=thrusts) close to his theoretical predictions using precise Q factor measurements with 16 mN using 850 W of microwave power – <b>close to 5600 times larger than expected from pure classical radiation thrust</b>. He claimed to have done checks for thermal and electromagnetic influence. Later testing was done on a torsion balance using air bearings where he observed rotation of the complete apparatus with all electronics and power supplies on-board.

Independent tests were carried out in China by Yang et al10-12 who tested the EMDrive on a force-feedback thrust stand and achieved up to 720 mN of thrust with 1000 W microwave power with even higher Q factors compared to Shawyer. Most recently, Brady et al tested the concept on a torsion balance at NASA with a (micro)N resolution obtaining thrusts of 50 (micro)N using only 20 W of RF power. The microwave electronics were mounted on the balance and power was fed using liquid metal contacts. Strong magnets were used for eddy current damping of the balance and a laser interferometer for monitoring the balance movement. Testing was quite limited (only a few test runs performed, no thruster direction reversal) and interaction with the magnetic damping during operation of the thruster was observed – however below the EMDrive thrust values. A null measurement was performed using a resistor

instead of the EMDrive.

UK media begins to report on the EM Drive

I’ve been watching this story for over a year, waiting for another laboratory confirmation of the thrust values. To my surprise, the UK media has begun to pick up on this development, too.

“The drive is capable of producing thrust several thousand times greater than a standard photon rocket and could get to Mars within 70 days or Pluto within 18 months,” reports the Telegraph. “A trip to Alpha Centauri, which would take tens of thousands of years to reach right now, could be reached in just 100 years.”

The Telegraph goes on to say:

Shawyer also claims that he is just a few months away from publishing new results confirming that his drive works in a peer reviewed journal.

However scientists still have no idea how it actually works. Nasa suggested that it could have something to do with the technology manipulating subatomic particles which constantly pop in and out of existence in empty space.

Prof Tajmer presented his findings to the 2015 American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition this week.

Known science blown away by a breakthrough that no one understands

One of the reasons I love to cover this sort of news is because it reinforces the all-important idea that arrogant scientists aren’t fooling Mother Nature. It’s nice to see arrogant scientists humbled from time to time by new, emerging phenomena they can’t explain.

Richard Feynman understood this. He was brilliant but humble, always fascinated by the mysteries of nature. Feynman fully realized that even his own vast knowledge of physics was little more than a spec of dust compared to the realm of knowledge and yet to be explored.

Today, far too many scientists have abandoned the very idea that anything new might yet be discovered. They think they know everything already… that “science” has reached a plateau of absolute truth from which zero divergence is tolerated. But that isn’t science… it’s dogma. Real science is the practice of intentionally pursuing new knowledge even when you realize that new discoveries might render your existing “scientific” beliefs obsolete.

“New science,” as it’s often described, enters the realm of quantum physics and even the influence of the observer (intention) on outcomes in the apparent physical universe. As the research document shown above explains, “Nasa suggested that it could have something to do with the technology manipulating subatomic particles which constantly pop in and out of existence in empty space.”

Such ideas frighten conventional, old-school scientists who are terrified of real discoveries because they might threaten their sacred dogma. The idea that a device which emits nothing might produce enormous thrust that could revolutionize space travel just isn’t a concept most scientists are willing to entertain… even if it might arguably be one of human civilization’s most important inventions ever. (The implications for colonization of other worlds are staggering… this could be the technology that takes humanity from a vulnerable, single-planet species to a galactic civilization.)

For that reason alone, the EM Drive will be viciously attacked by old-school physicists and stodgy, cognitively constipated scientists. The idea that their faith-based scientific beliefs might be overwritten by new expansions in human understanding simply infuriates them. So they lash out and attack the pioneers to tear them down, suppressing the advancement of science while simultaneously protecting their “intellectual territory” and industry influence.

Why future spaceships will look more like Death Stars than X-Wing Fighters

By the way, if the EM Drive proves workable, all those sci-fi films that depict spaceships producing visible, fiery thrust will suddenly be outmoded. In the future of space travel with EM Drives, there are no visible engines. Even better, a spaceship need not have any predetermined thrust orientation, since EM Drives could be built on internal gimbals deep inside the ship and pointed in any direction to produce thrust in that direction. You don’t need to mount them on the perimeter of the ship, in other words. They can be internal. This also means spaceships do not have to “turn” to alter their direction of thrust. It also means communications gear on the outside of such craft can be permanently oriented toward Earth, making communications far easier to maintain.

As a scientist myself, I can also tell you this means such ships will be built as spherical machines in order to mount the EM Drive engines in the center of mass (for all sorts of obvious reasons involving the laws of physics). Thus, future spaceships will look more like mini Death Stars than X-Wing fighters. There is no air in space. “Wings” are not necessary. Essentially, every spaceship you’ve seen in Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica is completely wrong.

Additional sources for this story include:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

https://hacked.com/scientists-confirm-impossible-em-drive-propulsion/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3177449/Nasa-s-impossible-fuel-free-thrusters-work-German-scientists-confirm-viability-super-fast-space-travel-slash-journey-moon-4-HOURS.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11769030/Impossible-rocket-drive-works-and-could-get-to-Moon-in-four-hours.html

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.1940

http://www.naturalnews.com/files/EM-drive-thrust.pdf

Natural News can now confirm that it wasn’t the Russians who stole the election for Donald Trump… it was aliens from planet Cockamamie in the Libtard Nebula, according to CNN sources that have chosen to remain anonymous because they also imagine they work for the CIA.

According to these sources, planet Cockamamie suffered a devastating population collapse due to economic restrictions thrust upon them by the galactic climate change cultists known as “AlGorians.” Following a mass starvation catastrophe caused by the Cockamamie Senate banning fossil fuels without having any energy replacement ready, Cockamamians found themselves needing to repopulate their planet with fresh organic specimens harvested from across the cosmos.

Hence their trip to Earth, a planet that was once believed to also suffer from mass starvation until televised signals of Michael Moore were captured and analyzed by Cockamamian scientists. Suddenly, Earth was heralded by distant civilizations as a “grand cosmic buffet” of processed food calories and incredibly disconnected leftist who seemed to already be living on another planet anyway.

California, in particular, was chosen as the first landing site because the state’s massive “Safe Space” sign can be observed from high orbit, and the aliens thought it was an invitation to freely engage in “open borders” cattle probing or anal mutilations… or perhaps the other way around.

Thus, shortly before Election Day, large metallic dildo-shaped craft shimmering with LGBTQ rainbow light displays were observed hovering over San Francisco… or at least that’s what the warehouse cult rave party survivors tweeted. According to reports, the dildo-shaped UFOs targeted high-density apartment complexes to ensure the harvesting of a high percentage of liberals who might feel more at home on planet Cockamamie, whose policies almost exactly parallel those of San Francisco, where homeless people are openly allowed to defecate on the sidewalks but never allowed to accept homemade food from gracious citizens due to the city-wide “food safety crackdown.”

Suddenly the dildo craft sprang into action. In a mesmerizing flash, millions of Californicators were beamed up to the dildo UFOs, where they were efficiently subjected to a battery of mental and physical tests. In one relentless test, gender-fluid grey humanoids (“CockaTransaMamians”) used oral, nasal and anal voltage stimulators to determine the biological resiliency of human subjects. To the shock of the greys, some San Franciscan captives actually enjoyed the experience and begged for more. Astonished, the CockaTransaMamians ejected them from captivity and teleported them into Starbucks coffee shops to serve as hyperstimulated faggoty baristas who immediately began berating customers with tales of “sexual escapades with 50 shades of Greys.”

Other humans were found to be too stupid to survive on planet Cockamamie, so they were dropped off at the county courthouse and encouraged to run for political office or even lead the DNC.

Deeper in the bowels of the alien mothership, left-wing commentator Keith Olbermann was observed being apparently molested by CockaTransaMamians who tried to apply a brain scan helmet to his butt cheeks while milking his nose for DNA samples. It turns out they couldn’t tell Keith’s head from his ass and had the guy completely upside down.

After realizing their error, they tried to make amends by installing a “Russian conspiracy” program into his feeble brain and using a Men-In-Black flashy thingy to wipe his memory… which also happened to make him an even better news teleprompter reader for Earth’s propaganda fake news networks. Now, as you can observe on his broadcasts, Keith Olbermann fully realizes he was violated but can’t remember why… but he’s certain the Russians did something nefarious to his rectum and he thinks it might have been a poo coup.

Meanwhile, all the captive space-faring Democrats tried to wage a “soft coup” takeover of the Cockamamian mothership, first by demanding a democratic vote on who should be running the ship, then rigging the vote by recirculating people who already voted to the back of the voting line to make sure they could vote a second time. But they got caught by the greys, whom the Democrats quickly condemned as “illegal aliens,” much to the amusement of those on board who were actual aliens. The Democrats got overruled, at which point they all started to scream for mommy and began leaping out of the docking bays, mistaking the “WARNING: SPACE” signs for “SAFE SPACE” indicators.

It turns out that in outer space, no one can hear you scream “WAAAAAHHH!”

As the Democrats remaining inside the dildo alien UFO screamed and sobbed and demanded hot cocoa to soothe their trauma, the greys began to second guess the wisdom in transplanting such pathetic creatures who were obviously incapable of survival in a dynamic universe. Even the Cockamamie education system on planet Cockamamie might be too advanced for these failed specimens, the greys quickly realized, so they decided to jettison the crybabies in Venezuela, where they are now eating out of garbage dumpsters and enjoying their “equality” under a failed left-wing state where everybody is equally miserable, thus solving the “inequality” problem once and for all.

Thanks to the missing Democrats, Donald Trump was elected President. As his first official intergalactic act, he opened a negotiation with the Cockamamians to ask them the most important question to help Make America Great Again: “How many more Democrats can you please remove from Earth on your next harvesting run?”

Their answer? “Hell no! We’ll go somewhere else.”

And that, my friends, is how Donald J. Trump saved Christmas from intergalactic aliens.

Microscopic particles from space have been collecting in the gutters of Paris, Oslo and Berlin, revealing incredible insights to the mysteries of our solar system.

Article by Ian O’Neill

Through dogged determination, Jon Larsen has become driven to find space particles, which date back to when our sun was a baby, in the urban sediment that collects in the guttering of building rooftops. And, after he convinced a British planetary scientist to study his findings, years of work have finally paid off.

In 2011, Larsen reached out to Matthew Genge, of Imperial College London, with his plan to find dust particles in this seemingly unlikely place. Though distinguishing space particles from the zoo of man-made dust particles in a city environment was considered too difficult, the hurdle didn’t deter Larsen.

“It was an amateur scientist, a chap called Jon Larsen who’s actually quite a well-known jazz musician in Norway, who got interested in this and started collecting all the debris that ends up in the gutter,” Genge told Seeker. After going through the debris found in the roof guttering from buildings in Oslo, Paris and Berlin, Larsen would send photos of interesting particles he’d find to Genge and, despite his pessimism that Larsen would ever uncover this unlikely quarry, he eventually struck gold.

Now, with Genge’s assistance, the pair have identified hundreds of particles that fell from space and have origins dating back to the birth of the solar system. Larsen documents his micrometeorite discoveries as part of Project Stardust.

“Imagine somebody who has been sending you pictures every other week of something, and every time you look at them, you’re like ‘no, no, no, that’s not it’ and then after 5 years they send you a picture and it actually is the thing that you’re looking for… that was the moment I went ‘oh, my God! I should pay more attention to this guy!'” Genge added.

“He’s put in so much work. He went through 300 kilograms [660 lb] of sediment from gutters. That’s pretty incredible.”

As described in research published in the journal Geology, the duo identified 500 particles of dust that originate from asteroids and comets. But finding these cosmic artifacts in the dirt was just the beginning; their research has revealed some profound science about the space dust that is falling onto our heads right at this moment and could add another layer to our understanding about the building blocks of planets.

Our solar system is filled with dust from collisions between asteroids and venting from comets. The most visible sign of this dust encountering Earth are the meteor showers that light up the upper atmosphere as Earth orbits though one of the many dusty trails left behind these interplanetary vagabonds. However, the tiny particles that rain through the atmosphere as “shooting stars” burn up completely, leaving only a bright flash in their wake. Their journey comes to an abrupt end as a blaze of super-heated glory.

“These particles [in gutter sediment] are almost definitely not coming from meteor showers as that dust comes in too fast — it comes in at maybe 30 kilometers per second [67,000 miles per hour] — and it completely evaporates in the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Genges.

The gutter particles are thought to enter the atmosphere at a speed of around 12 kilometers per second (27,000 miles per hour) where atmospheric heating does inevitably heat up the particles, but the dust survives the fall. Judging by their size of around 0.3 millimeters, these are likely the fastest dust particles to survive the hot atmospheric entry, noted Genges. Through analysis of the 500 specimens, the researchers found there to be a mix of particles that originate from asteroids and others that originate from comets.

“We have found dust particles that we think come from comets and they are subtly different from those that come from asteroids … they are carbon rich. Whereas the ones from asteroids look similar to the material from meteorites, that are also from asteroids,” he added.

Separating the cosmic particles from plain old gutter dirt is no easy task, but the researchers used an important trait found in these space particles to their advantage — they contain minerals that make them magnetic. So, by magnetically separating the dirt under the microscope, these particles could be found.

“These [particles] are very similar to the cosmic dust from deep sea sediments,” said Genges. “The main difference is that these are very young. Because they’ve been largely collected from roofs on commercial buildings, those buildings have their gutters cleaned at least every 3-5 years, so we know these [particles] have landed on Earth at least in the last 5 years. Whereas the particles found on the seabed are up to 50,000 years old. These are a sample of what’s landing on Earth, practically today.”

As this dust has fallen to Earth within the last 5 years, the researchers could even deduce how the solar system dust falling on Earth has changed over the last million years. The dust found in city gutters contains fewer crystals than the dust that has been found in million-year-old ice Antarctica, for example, but the particles are remarkably similar to cosmic dust that fell onto Earth in medieval times.

According to an Imperial College London press release, the researchers think that the changes in dust particle structure could be down to very small orbital changes in the solar system’s planets over millions of years. The slight gravitational disturbances likely change the trajectory of the interplanetary dust, causing it to hit the Earth’s atmosphere at different speeds and angles. These slight changes can therefore influence how much heating is caused by atmospheric entry which, in turn, influences the size of the particles that make it to the ground and influence the shape of the crystals inside the microscopic grains.

In short, these tiny cosmic grains of dust hold an incredible amount of information about the state of the planets’ orbits when they hit Earth, but they are also the very tiny fossilized remains of our solar system, emerging directly from the material in the nebula that went on to form our sun and the planets.

“The actual materials of comets and asteroids have a very long history; they date back to the birth of our solar system four and a half billion years ago,” said Genges.

When Oscar Wilde composed his famous quote, “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” little did he know that, one day, a Norwegian amateur scientist would be looking for star dust in the gutter.

Read more at: seeker.com

Article by Dan Tynan

On board was a $200m, 12,000lb communications satellite – part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project to deliver broadband access to sub-Saharan Africa.

Zuckerberg wrote, with a note of bitterness, on his Facebook page that he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite”. SpaceX founder Elon Musk told CNN it was the “most difficult and complex failure” the 14-year-old company had ever experienced.

It was also the second dramatic explosion in nine months for SpaceX, following a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of a booster rocket as it attempted to land after a successful mission to the International Space Station.

Later that day, Nasa’s official Twitter account responded: “Today’s @SpaceX incident – while not a Nasa launch – reminds us that spaceflight is challenging.”

Yet despite those challenges, a small band of billionaire technocrats have spent the past few years investing hundreds of millions of dollars into space ventures. Forget gilded mansions and super yachts; among the tech elite, space exploration is the ultimate status symbol.

Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, is arguably the most visible billionaire in the new space race. The apparent inspiration for Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark character in Iron Man, Musk has become a god-like figure for engineers, making his fortune at PayPal and then as CEO of luxury electric car firm Tesla and clean energy company Solar City. Yet it is his galactic ambitions, insiders say, that really motivate him. “His passion is settling Mars,” says one.

SpaceX has completed 32 successful launches since 2006, delivered cargo to the International Space Station and secured more than $10bn in contracts with Nasa and other clients. Musk has much grander ambitions, though, saying he plans to create a “plan B” for humanity in case Earth ultimately fails. He once famously joked that he hoped to die on Mars – just not on impact.

The alternative to extinction is to become ‘multi-planetary’

Musk has outlined an ambitious timeline for colonizing the red planet, which he said could begin as soon as 2022. Speaking to the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico in September, Musk described a 400-foot-tall rocket that would ferry 100 colonists at a time to Mars over a period of decades.

“One [path] is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event,” he told the audience of scientists and engineers. “The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planetary species.”

Ashlee Vance, longtime tech journalist and author of Elon Musk: Tesla, Space, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, thinks these ambitions are driven by a mix of entrepreneurial curiosity, altruism and a dash of egotism. “The guys who are rulers of the universe now are the nerds,” he says. “They were all geeks raised on science fiction and the vision of space we had in the 1960s and 70s. Now they have the money to make this a reality.”

And no one more so than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his estimated fortune of $67bn. Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000 and kept secret until 2006, has also unveiled plans for its New Glenn launch vehicle, a 270ft rocket capable of carrying passengers to Mars. The company has made a dozen test launches, including October’s test of the in-flight escape system for the unashamedly phallic New Shepard rocket.

Blue Origin landed a small contract with Nasa to conduct suborbital research missions in June 2015, but has yet to complete a commercial flight. In June 2016, Bezos told reporters Blue Origin would begin test flights carrying humans next year. He ends many of his emails and tweets with the Blue Origin motto “Gradatim Ferociter” – “Step by step, ferociously”.

Altruism, or egotism?

At a conference in June, Bezos compared the new space industry to the early days of the internet – likening it to how the fiber optic cable laid for voice communications in the 1960s and 1970s ultimately paved the way for today’s data-driven economy.

“I’m building infrastructure the hard way,” he said. “I’m using my resources to put in place heavy lifting infrastructure … so that future generations of entrepreneurs can have a solar system as dynamic and interesting and varied as what we see on the internet today.”

Bezos is interested in an unlimited future economy where much of our manufacturing takes place in space, sparing Earth from pollution. “You go to space to save Earth,” Bezos said. “We have sent robotic probes all over the solar system. Let me assure you, this is the best planet.”

Bezos and Musk have developed an intense personal rivalry, says Ashlee Vance. “As time has gone on and these companies have been successful, ambitions have grown. Musk and Bezos used to be cordial, but they’re vicious now.”

In 2013, SpaceX and Blue Origin fought over control of a Nasa launch pad and a patent for landing rockets at sea; Musk won both tussles. When Blue Origin tried to block SpaceX from using the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Musk emailed Space News slamming the company and questioning its ability to build a rocket that would meet Nasa standards. “We are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct,” Musk wrote.

After a successful Blue Origin test launch and landing in November 2015, Bezos used his first ever tweet to boast about “the rarest of beasts – a used rocket”. Musk replied: “Not quite ‘rarest’. SpaceX Grasshopper did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around”.

Read more at: Space.com

Article by Ancient Code

Simply put, Earth’s moon is one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system. It is considered a ‘weird’ celestial body due to its numerous physical qualities which scientists are unable to explain, and due to the fact that it is the most unique object in the solar system, incomparable to any other moon found to date.

In fact, the moon is so unique that Dr. Robert Jastrow, the first president of NASA’s Commission of Lunar Exploration called the moon “the Rosetta Stone of the planets.”

To get an idea just how weird the moon is, we only have to take a look at a quote by Robin Brett, a scientist from NASA who stated, “It seems easier to explain the non-existence of the Moon than its existence.”

But what makes the moon so weird?

It’s big. In fact, it is huge. With a diameter of about 3,476 kilometers the Moon is a quarter the size of Earth. Except for Pluto and Charon, this is the largest known proportion between a moon and its parent body among the numerous objects of our system.

It has a weird orbit that’s so unique scientists have not been able to find it anywhere else in the solar system. It turns that all other moons in our solar system orbit their planets around the equator. Our moon does not, and orbits Earth at an inclination of five degrees. The moon has a precise altitude, course, and speed, allowing it to “function” properly in regards of planet Earth. Simply put the Moon should not be where it is currently.

The Moon is almost an Earth. The composition of our natural satellite is similar to that of Earth, unlike most other moons. Who are clearly different from their parent planets.

If the above details did not catch your attention, there’s more.

There are some lunar rocks that have been found to contain PROCESSED METALS such as Brass, Mica and Uranium 236 and Neptunium 237. These elements have NEVER been found to occur naturally. Uranium 236 is a radioactive nuclear waste which is found in spent nuclear and reprocessed Uranium. More interestingly, Neptunium 237 is a radioactive metallic element and a by-product of nuclear reactors and the production of Plutonium.

These mysterious lunar characteristics have led Mikhail Vasin and Alexander Shcerbakov from the Soviet Academy of Science to write an article in the 1970’s about the moon called “Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?”

Furthermore, Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry said he was “terribly puzzled by the rocks astronauts found on the moon and their Titanium content. The samples were unimaginable and mind-blowing since researchers could not account for the presence of Titanium.

In other words, our Moon does not share any characteristics with other moons found in our Solar System. If that isn’t strange enough, consider that from any point on the surface of our planet only one side of the Moon is visible.

Read more at: www.ancient-code.com

In a speech regarding job growth, President-elect Trump expressed his desire to improve NASA, stating, “A cornerstone of my policy is we will substantially expand public private partnerships to maximize the amount of investment and funding that is available for space exploration and development. This means launching and operating major space assets, right here, that employ thousands and spur innovation and fuel economic growth.”

One of Trump’s main campaign promises was bringing jobs back to the United States, and that appears to be his intention with making NASA great again, if you will. Trump went on to state, “I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low earth orbit activity.” As the president-elect has noticed time and time again while working as a businessman in America, there are far too many regulations on everything in this country. The more the federal government gets its hands on something, the more likely that thing is to crumble under the restrictions.

Historically, the American people have been fascinated by the concept of space travel, and there is no time like the present to explore the future of such. Knowledge is power, and our knowledge of space and the solar system needs to expand if we want to truly understand the world around us.

Most important, though, is the fact that by once again testing the borders of space travel, the United States will be creating countless jobs that will put many American people back to work and stimulate our economy – which it is in desperate need of at the moment. This truly is a win-win for the entire country, and it’s something that everyone, regardless of which party they belong to, should be getting behind.

Only time will tell if Trump is actually able to put this into action, but as of right now, hopes are high for the unconventional president-elect. Almost everything he is attempting to do is a good thing, and it should be only a matter of time before America is on track to actually become great again.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

SpaceFlightInsider.com

Express.co.uk

Article by Mike Wall

On Nov. 21, mission controllers on the ground lit up the Spacecraft Fire Experiment II (Saffire-II) aboard the private, uncrewed Cygnus cargo spacecraft, shortly after the freighter had left the International Space Station (ISS). You can watch some of the space fires burn in this NASA video released after the successful experiment.

Saffire-II burned nine different samples, in an effort to gauge the flammability of various materials in a microgravity environment. These 12-by-2-inch (30 by 5 centimeters) samples included silicon of different thicknesses; a cotton-fiberglass blend; plexiglass; and Nomex, a commercially available material that’s used in spacecraft on cargo bags and as a fire barrier, NASA officials said.

Everything went well during the experiment, they added: All nine samples burned as planned, and the Saffire-II team collected more than 100,000 images. All data had come back down to Earth by Friday (Nov. 25), at which point Saffire-II achieved “complete mission success,” NASA officials wrote in an update.

The three-phase Saffire program investigates how fires spread in space, with the aim of helping engineers design safer crewed vessels down the road. Saffire-I ignited a single, large piece of cotton-fiberglass material aboard a different Cygnus in June, and Saffire-III will set a similarly large-scale fire when its time comes on a future Cygnus mission, NASA officials have said.

You can learn more about the Saffire program here: https://www.nasa.gov/saffire

The Cygnus that housed Saffire-II arrived at the ISS on Oct. 23, delivering thousands of pounds of supplies and scientific experiments to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab. The freighter departed the space station on Nov. 21, and then it hung around in orbit long enough for the Saffire-II experiments to take place and to deploy several tiny cubesats.

The Cygnus then re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday (Nov. 27), burning up in an intentional death dive. (Cygnus vehicles, which are built by the Virginia-based aerospace company Orbital ATK, are designed to be disposable.)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Read more at: space.com

Article by Adam Boult

That issue is (and keep a straight face please, we’re all adults here and there’s nothing remotely amusing about normal bodily functions) poo. Or ‘poop’, as NASA are calling it, because they’re Americans.

“In space,” the agency reminds us, “there are no toilets. While you may go about your life mostly unaffected by this, it is more of a challenge for our brave astronauts in their space suits.