These vials of Moon dust have been missing for nearly 40 years, and apparently have just been sitting safely in storage all this time out in California. A local archivist by the name Karen Nelson, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, made the discovery earlier this month according to Fox News.

These rare and important vials of Moon dust were from the Apollo 11 and were brought back to Earth by the first men to step foot on the moon. So instantly many are wondering just how they managed to get “lost” in storage all this time. It’s being reported that Nelson was going over random tucked away in storage artifacts and was shocked when she stumbled upon the vials.

This isn’t just one or two that could of easily gone missing. She came across almost 20 vials complete with handwritten labels dated “24 July 1970,” which were safely packed in vacuum-sealed glass jars. Along with the discovery was an academic paper discussing the Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference in 1971. Apparently that paper was titled “Study of carbon compounds in Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 returned lunar samples.”

“We don’t know how or when they ended up in storage…They were surprised we had the samples”

The above statement was all the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had to say. The questions remains as to how and why something of this nature was lost to begin with, but Space agency officials assume that the unaccounted for vials were destroyed in testing. In reality they should have been returned to NASA instead of ending up in a storage container for 40 years. One day these could be used again in lab testing, but for now are safely in NASA’s sample vault.

Curiosity drilled a 2.6-inch-deep hole into a rock named “Cumberland” yesterday, and the resulting powdered dust from the drilling will be analyzed by the rover’s on-board instruments, where it will run a series of tests to see if there are any matches with the dust sample from the first drilling at “John Klein,” which is the name of the rock that Curiosity drilled into first.

The first drilling is said to include evidence that there was once life on Mars, but NASA wants to confirm those findings by drilling a second hole in a different location. We’re not sure when we’ll hear the results from the second drilling, but it took a couple of weeks for Curiosity to start analyzing the dirt sample from the first drilled hole.

In between these two drillings, Curiosity experienced a bit of a hiccup while in the middle of duty. One of its on-board computers crashed, leaving it up to the backup computer to do some work. However, it still delayed experiments for a couple of weeks, and NASA scientists had to apply a few software patches to the main computer to get it in working order again.

Eventually, though, the rover found that there was once possibly life on Mars. Scientists identified some key components in the rock samples that are critical to sustain life, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. Even the rocks themselves showed signs that particles in the rocks were formed by water. This second drilling hopes to confirm that, but we’ll be waiting a few days, and maybe even a few weeks before we hear results from NASA.

VIA: Space.com

However, it’s important to note that this is a NASA record. The world record for the longest driving distance on another planet goes to the Soviet Union, who piloted a Lunokhod 2 rover in 1973, which traveled 23 miles on the Moon. Opportunity has been traveling Mars for over nine years now, and its still collecting rock samples and conducting experiences, even if Curiosity’s fame is overshadowing it all.

Opportunity broke the NASA record on its 3,309th Martian day by traveling 263 feet along the western rim of the Endeavour Crater. The rover first landed on Mars in January 2004 and has so far traveled 22.22 miles, meaning that the rover averaged a speed of 0.00028 miles per hour (roughly). Of course, 22 miles isn’t long at all for us humans, but it’s quite the trek for a robot.

Based on these numbers, Curiosity hasn’t even left the driveway yet. The new rover is just over a year old, but if NASA really puts it to work, Curiosity could break Opportunity’s record at a quicker pace, as well as the possibility of breaking the world record and taking the honor away from the Soviet Lunokhod 2.

Of course, Curiosity has already been the victim of a couple mishaps. One of its onboard computers ended up failing, resulting in a pause of operations that would delay experiments for a couple of weeks. While the rover eventually got back on its feet, it lost precious time that could’ve been used for collecting samples and taking images of the red planet.

VIA: CNET

SOURCE: NASA

Hadfield will be taking an hour to answer questions from media, and it should give viewers some insight into Hadfields experience aboard the ISS. We’ve already seen a number of his videos, and now know more about ISS life than we ever have, but the hour-long discussion could be a good chance to learn more about his experiences up in space.

Chris Hadfield ended his ISS Commander stint on a very good note, by commanding a successful emergency spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak in “record time,” according to Hadfield himself. That was certainly a good stopping point for the ISS Commander, similar to a coach or player retiring after winning the championship game.

Hadfield also recorded the first ever music video from space as his “sign-off” of sorts, singing a slightly-modified version of David Bowie’s 1969 hit “Space Oddity.” Hadfield recorded the song on the space station, as well as the video (obviously), and beamed them down to Earth to be mixed and edited together to make the final product, which you can watch above.

During his time on the ISS, Hadfield also conducted a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) where he answered questions and discussed a variety of various things relating to space, including why he became an astronaut and what the training process is like, as well as the fears and dangers associated with traveling to space and living there for a few months. As for what Hadfield will do next, no one knows yet, but he could reveal his future plans during Thursday’s press conference.

SOURCE: Canadian Space Agency

The ISS’s power relies on ammonia coolant, so if that supply runs out, the space station would go dark and all the vital equipment needed for survival would stop working, which at that point the crew would be in grave danger. According to ISS Commander Chris Hadfield, the leak appears to have been stabilized, but there still needs to be a solid fix.

In order for the ammonia-based coolant system to operate normally, it needs a certain amount of ammonia in the tanks. However, based on the rate of the leak, the levels in the tanks could drop below that sweet-spot level within 48 hours, at which point the system would be at risk of shutting itself down due to a lack of ammonia. Of course, the station can operate on a broken cooling system, but it would take some clever thinking to prevent ISS components from overheating.

Luckily, the astronauts on board are fairly confident as far as where the leak is coming from, so once they begin their spacewalk, they’ll hopefully be able to go right to the leak and immediately begin repairing it. The spacewalk is being planned as we speak (with a live stream of the whole thing), and astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are getting their spacesuits prepared for the spacewalk, which will take place at some point tomorrow.

In a similar but unrelated note, the United States Alliance has switched over the ISS’s computer systems from Windows to Linux to make sure that they’re “stable and reliable.” Specifically, the ISS was running Windows XP (not even Windows 7?), and they have now started to switch to Debian 6. For what it’s worth, however, some computers on the ISS have already been running various versions of Linux, including RedHat and Scientific Linux.

SOURCE: Chris Hadfield and ExtremeTech

Jeep Barnett, who already has one of the coolest jobs around, has applied to become an astronaut for Mars One where he could be one of the chosen few to be taken to Mars forever. Barnett is a programmer at Valve, the game studio behind the Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life, and Team Fortress series. He wants to quit his Valve gig and go to Mars full-time.

In his application, Barnett says that he’s always been interested in science fiction, and always grew up believing that such things would eventually turn into reality. A trip to Mars would put Barnett in a first-person experience where he would be able to live his childhood fantasy — traveling to another planet.

Frankly, Barnett would go to Mars ASAP if asked, saying that while such a trip would obviously require years of training, he’d be up for the trip by “next week” if needed. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Barnett hates his job at Valve, but going to Mars is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and Barnett doesn’t seem keen on letting it pass him by.

[via Kotaku]

The move to New Mexico will allow SpaceX to test out its Grasshopper reusable rocket at higher altitudes. The last launch of the Grasshopper resulted in the rocket reaching a record altitude of 820 feet before slowly making its way back down and landing right where it launched in a perfectly upright position.

Spaceport America is owned by the state of New Mexico, so Elon Musk and company will pay the state $25,000 for each launch of the Grasshopper, as well as a $6,600 monthly “lease” fee to use a mobile mission control facility. However, this isn’t nearly as much as the $1 million-a-year fee that Virgin Galactic pays to use the facilities.

It’s not said what SpaceX’s plans are after the three-year deal is up, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the company built their own spaceport eventually. There’s been talks about it in the past, but nothing solid has been said about it yet. We can only assume that Musk has high hopes for the company in the future.

We’re not exactly sure what cities we’re looking at in the photo, but Hadfield points out that its the southeastern United States, with the bigger city toward the right side being Atlanta or Charlotte possibly. In any case, the horizon looks absolutely amazing, and the moon creeping in makes the photo that much more spectacular.

Hadfield not only takes a ton of photos of Earth from the ISS (which you can browse through all of them with this neat interactive map), but he also provides short videos on what it’s like to live on the ISS, and in one of his latest videos, he describes how he takes photos of Earth from the ISS. The secret? A huge lens.

Hadfield primarily uses a Nikon DSLR with a 400mm lens. This is one heavy setup, but thanks to the lack of gravity in space, Hadfield doesn’t need to strain his shoulders or arms lifting and holding the camera. Instead, the camera merely just floats in front of him. Hadfield even says that they take the cameras out on spacewalks into the cold vacuum of space. We’ll be keeping up with Hadfield and the ISS over the next months for any more photos that he posts in the future. Stay tuned!

The video you’re about to see was created by NASA as an accurate approximation of the paths that these two heavenly bodies followed. As is the norm with this sort of situation with more than one country’s hardware in the mix, this event has been under wraps for some time. The actual near-crash occurred on April 3rd of 2012, just over a year ago.

NASA has made clear that the hit was avoided only due to the quick action of engineers working to dodge disaster with a blast of the craft’s thrusters. The NASA craft, otherwise known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the Russian craft would have passed the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of one another if it had not been for engineer action on the ground.

Though the Russian craft was traveling at approximately 27,000 miles per hour (43,452 km/h) in relation to Fermi, ended up avoiding a crash by 6 miles (9 km) when they’d have otherwise hit. According to NASA, the actual move was relatively easy, when it came down to it.

“The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second. There was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well.” -Eric Stoneking, attitude control lead engineer for Fermi at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Below you’ll find a second video, this one emphasizing the importance of relieving our near-earth space junk in the near future. The European Space Agency has held six conferences thus far dedicated solely to fighting the space junk threat, and several countries have begun tests of space junk destruction for the future.

[via Space]

NASA has a developed a plan to replace the space shuttle by paying private space companies like SpaceX to send astronauts to the ISS. However, due to government budget cuts, the original 2015 date when we would see this happen has been delayed two years into 2017. As a result, NASA has had to pay the Roscosmos Space Agency $424 million to extend their contract into 2017.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that “it is unacceptable that we don’t currently have an American capability to launch our own astronauts.” Bolden and company is calling upon Congress to approve President Obama’s budget request of $821 million for NASA, or else there will be further delays past 2017 to launch astronauts from the US.

At least we have an American company sending and bringing back cargo off the ISS. SpaceX, which was founded by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, has completed several resupply missions to the ISS so far, and NASA hopes soon that SpaceX rockets will be carrying astronauts up into space within the next few years.

Two cosmonauts will be making the spacewalk along with the Olympic torch in order to celebrate the games that will be taking place in Russia. The torch walk is scheduled to begin on October 7 this year, and it will span 123 days and travel more than 34,000 miles. The torch will also be carried by 14,000 different people, which would be a record for Olympic torch walks.

The deputy head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Vitaly Davydov, said that the torch that will be carried to space will be “the same as the torch at the Olympics,” although the torch will not be lit on its way to space, since open flames are prohibited from being carried inside a spaceship while traveling to the ISS.

The spacewalk with the torch is set to take place in November, and it’s expected to return back to Earth on November 12. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky are expected to perform the space walk with the torch. Other places that the torch is scheduled to go to is Mount Elbrus (the highest peak of Europe), the bottom of Lake Baikal, and the North Pole.

[via Russian Times]

Few details are known at this point, but Hadfield referred to the damage on the solar panel as a “bullet hole,” and said that he was “glad it missed the hull.” We’re not sure exactly what would happen if a small rock like that collided with the ISS hull, but judging from Hadfield’s sigh of relief, nothing good would come out of it.

We’re guessing that the hole didn’t cause too much severe damage to the solar panel, or else the ISS would be in deep trouble. We’re not sure how large the small hole is, but it doesn’t look big at all — merely a small speck compared to the sheer size of the solar panels on the station.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Hadfield has talked about small meteoroids hitting the ISS. He hosted a Reddit AmA back in February where he discussed “micro-meteorites would sometimes hit the hull and make a loud “ping” noise, which leaves dents on the outside of the station. However, Hadfield notes that a larger piece of rock could come along and cause greater damage.

This initial test was done at a runway at California’s Mojave Air and Spaceport this morning – Monday, that is, the 29th of April. This test was done with carrier mothership WhiteKnightTwo, it carrying SS2 to an altitude of around 47,000 feet (14,300 meters) where the smaller craft test-fired a rocket engine that would, or will, eventually carry it to its space-bound top height.

This test is only the very first in a set of tests that will eventually prove the craft viable for real human use. British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, owner and founder of Virgin Galactic, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, etc, spoke this morning of the event in brief, suggesting his day thus far has been “ridiculously exciting”. With flight tickets set at the moment at an expected two hundred thousand dollars a person, it’s not difficult to see more than one reason why Branson would find this day a positive one.

According to Virgin Galactic, they plan on running their first official full space flight by the end of the calendar year. This flight may or may not be working with user-purchased tickets at that time.

Virgin Galactic is a concept born not just of Branson’s wishes to head to space, but of the company’s ever-expanding aims to bring consumers entertaining experiences in travel. Such is a flight aboard a Virgin Airlines flight, complete with posh interiors and wireless phone chargers in specialized waiting rooms at the airport. After Virgin Galactic takes off for real, we expect Virgin Volcanic to head below our Earth with a giant drill – it’d only be right.

UPDATE: A video has been released showing this event, specifically the bit where the SpaceShipTwo breaks the speed of sound – watch for it now.

[via Space]

The plan is to put astronauts on Mars by 2023, and they will begin the recruitment process in July. The company began accepting video applications last week, and anyone can apply, but there’s an application fee of $25, which is there to prevent spammers and those not serious about joining the expedition from applying.

The money earned from application fees are predicted to reach in the millions of dollars, and that money will be spent to help fund the entire project. Essentially, those who apply will have to agree to fly to Mars and say there for the rest of their lives, helping build a colony on the red planet in the meantime.

Mars One will narrow down its applicants to a short list of 24 to 40 applicants, with the final group being selected by a TV audience. The final group will be the first group to head to Mars. The short list of candidates is said to be selected by July 2015, so if you plan on applying, you’ll be waiting a couple years before you hear back, giving all new meaning to the hiring phrase, “we’ll let you know.”

[via io9]

This situation allows Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko and Pavel Vinogradov to access three full tons of food, fuel, supplies, and a set of experiment hardware along with the rest of the crew of six aboard the ISS. Though the Kurs antenna remained undeployed, it would appear that the mission has been a full success. The final hard mate occurred at 8:34 a.m. EDT according to NASA.

This docking happened between the Progress 51 Russian cargo ship and the rear port of the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station. What you’re seeing above is a video presented by Russian mission control of the Russian Federal Space Agency at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This launch made way at 6:12 a.m. EDT just two days ago en route to the ISS.

With the supplies brought in this week, the ISS will be stocked with an additional 1,764 pounds of propellant, 57 pounds of air, 926 pounds of water, 48 pounds of oxygen, and 3,483 pounds of spare parts and experiment hardware. For its trip back to our planet, the Progress 51 craft will be filled with trash and station discards. Good luck, team!

And readers, be sure to head to SlashGear’s Science tag portal for more excellent space-bound action!

Each of these PhoneSats is set to remain in orbit around our planet Earth for a period of up to two weeks. All three of the units have had transmissions received by multiple ground stations thus far, this ringing up as great news for those running the mission from Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

“It’s always great to see a space technology mission make it to orbit — the high frontier is the ultimate testing ground for new and innovative space technologies of the future. Smartphones offer a wealth of potential capabilities for flying small, low-cost, powerful satellites for atmospheric or Earth science, communications, or other space-born applications. They also may open space to a whole new generation of commercial, academic and citizen-space users.” – NASA associate administrator for space technology in Washington, Michael Gazarik

Each of the structures that make up a PhoneSat includes a standard cubical structure approximately 4-inches square, an HTC Nexus One smartphone, and s set of sensors. Each setup also includes a lithium-ion battery that’s significantly larger than that of the original HTC Nexus One as well as a radio with significantly more power than the original smartphone provided so that messages can be sent from high distances above the Earth.

The video above shows an early test launch of an HTC Nexus One launched with a balloon back in 2012 – you’re seeing this video from the perspective of the phone, mind you.

The original HTC Nexus One provides many of the features needed to create the NASA PhoneSat “off the shelf” unit. Each PhoneSat employs a series of miniature sensors, relatively high-resolution cameras, GPS receivers, and more – and whatever else the mission requires that the HTC Nexus One doesn’t provide.

Each of the units launched in this mission cost NASA engineers between $3,500 and $7,000 USD – significantly less expensive compared to essentially any other type of satellite. These costs are relatively low due to NASA engineers’ use of mass-produced commercial hardware such as – you guessed it – the HTC Nexus One.

We’ll continue watching for this set of three Android-toting amigos as they make their trip through our atmosphere and back towards the planet over the next few days and – hopefully – weeks as well.

[via Cellular News]

The last time the Grasshopper was test launched was last month on March 7, where the rocket soared roughly 263 feet in the air before making its way back to the ground. This time however, the Grasshopper ended up reaching 820 feet. The SpaceX team has constantly been working on the new rocket, and we expect more test launches in the future where we almost guarantee that the rocket will keep going higher and higher.

The Grasshopper has come quite a ways from when it conducted its first test launch, which only took the rocket 8.2 feet in the air before coming back down and landing on all fours. Seeing the rocket hover over the land at 820 feet is pretty surreal, especially considering that many people think of rockets as just going up and coming back down, crashing into the ocean. Whereas this rocket can be reused.

The SpaceX Grasshopper is a 10-story-tall Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that the company designed in order to test the various technologies needed to build a full rocket that can return to Earth to be reused, instead of most rockets that are simply designed to burn up in the atmosphere during re-entry. SpaceX’s Grasshopper is being designed to return to the Earth and land vertically on all four of its legs.

Antares was able to reach its target altitude of 155 miles above earth within 10 minutes. It carried with it a dummy capsule weighing about 8,377 pounds. The dummy was meant to represent that actual weight of the Cygnus capsule. Along with the test launch, Antares successfully released three small-sized Phonesat satellites, Alexander, Graham and Bell, into orbit. These satellites were part of an experiment for NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Now that Orbital has finally completed its test launch, it plans on doing two more launches this year. The first launch is expected to come around June, and will be the Orbital’s first cargo fight to the International Space Station. The second launch is expected to happen sometime in November. The Cygnus capsule is expected to bring about 5,952 pounds of supplies to the ISS when it launches in November.

Orbital is one of two private companies contracted by NASA to bring cargo to the ISS. It has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA, and is expected to complete 8 cargo missions. The other company, SpaceX, has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA, and has already completed 2 out of 12 of its cargo missions. NASA stated that it enlisted the help of both these companies because it didn’t want to give one company the monopoly on space cargo deliveries. Congratulations to Orbital. We’re looking forward to its future launches.

[via Space.com]

Orbital Sciences Corp. planned on launching the rocket on April 17th, but due to a minor equipment malfunction, the launch was delayed until the 18th. A data cable at the upper stage of the Antares rocket detached too early, causing the delay. On April 18th, 19th, and today, the launch was rescheduled over and over due to strong winds present at the launch site. Hopefully tomorrow will be different.

Orbital is trying to test launch the Antares rocket to see if its ready for prime-time. Orbital is one of two companies contracted by NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. It has to complete 8 unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station using its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule in order to uphold its $1.9 billion contract. SpaceX, the other company contracted by NASA, has already completed 2 out of 12 of its cargo missions, placing it ways ahead of Orbital.

When Orbital is able to successfully test launch its Antares rocket, it will carry a simulated Cygnus capsule to an altitude of 155 to 185 miles above Earth. It will also launch 4 satellites into orbit. If everything goes as planned, Orbital will be officially launching its Antares rocket with the real Cygnus Capsule come November, with the capsule delivering 5,952 pounds of supplies to the ISS.

[via Space.com]

Vinogradov is working with Flight Engineer and Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko to replace a broken reflector, as well as retrieve and install experiment equipment on the exterior of the station. Up until today, the oldest person to perform a spacewalk was now-retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Vinogradov has been a cosmonaut for 20 years and today’s spacewalk is his seventh so far. is making his seventh spacewalk. His first-ever spacewalk took place in 1997 aboard Russia’s old Mir space station. Vinogradov will turn 60 aboard the space station this summer, as he’s been assigned for six months up on the ISS.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that Vinogradov’s partner during today’s spacewalk, Romanenko, is experiencing his first spacewalk ever. Romanenko, who is 41, follows in his father’s footsteps, Yuri Romanenko, who went to space in the 1970s and 1980s. The young Romanenko joked that he is “afraid of the darkness,” as the two cosmonauts stepped outside the ISS.

[via FOX News]

The spacewalk will last a total of six hours, and it’s going on right now, and you can view what the cosmonauts are seeing thanks to their helmet cameras, and you can also hear the audio transmission between the two cosmonauts and the mission control on the ground, which is pretty neat. Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko are the two cosmonauts making the spacewalk.

The spacewalkers will be tasked with installing what’s called the Obstanovka experiment on the exterior of the station’s Zvezda service module. The equipment will study plasma waves and the effect of space weather on Earth’s ionosphere. They will also retrieve the Biorisk experiment, which studied the effect of microbes on spacecraft structures.

The cosmonauts will also replace a faulty retro-reflector device, which is just one of the navigational aids that provides assistance to the European Space Agency’s Albert Einstein Automated Transfer Vehicle 4 cargo ship, where it will automatically dock to the space station later in June.

Mars One will begin accepting video submissions for this first round of astronauts, and while anyone can apply, the organization is looking to weed out the spammers and time-wasters by instituting a $25 entry fee, which certainly isn’t a lot, but it could help with separating the serious candidates from the ones who simply just want to have fun. The fee will also be put towards funding for the entire project.

Mars One hopes to raise millions of dollars from the application process alone, and they expect that a million applications will be sent in, and some of the video applications may end up going viral, which hints that Mars One may not exactly keep these video applications confidential, but one million applications sure is a strong goal to set. However, the company already has 45,000 people on its mailing list, with over 10,000 people already sending in emails explaining their interest in going to Mars.

Anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply, and the video should explain why you should be selected. However, this won’t be an easy job, and Mars One says that you should be prepared to say goodbye to Earth forever, since the organization has no plans to bring astronauts back. By July 2015, Mars One wants to have 24 astronauts recruited, where they will then face seven years of training that will include spending three months at a time in a replica of the Mars colony.

[via Space.com]

However, not only will this test launch show whether or not Orbital is ready to deliver on its contract, it will also put Wallops Island into the spotlight as well. William Wrobel, director of the Wallops Island-based NASA facility hopes that this test launch will show that the facility is more than just a research facility, and that it is capable of doing “regular flights out of here to the space station”, just like the NASA facilities in Florida, California, and Texas.

During the test launch, the Antares rocket will carry a simulated version of the Cygnus capsule to an altitude of 155 to 185 miles above Earth. It will also be delivering 4 small satellites into orbit. If everything is successful, Orbital will be well on its way to a test launch of its Cygnus Capsule in November. The Cygnus capsule is expected to carry 5,952 pounds of supplies to the ISS.

Orbital is one of two private companies contracted by NASA, with the other being SpaceX. Orbital is still quite a ways behind SpaceX, because while its Cygnus capsule would burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere upon re-entry, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule can return to Earth just fine, and can also bring with it supplies, equipment, and science experiments from the ISS. Orbital has yet to complete one of its 8 required cargo missions, however SpaceX has already completed 2 out of its 12 missions required from its $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

Orbital is mostly known for launching small satellites into space. It is also getting more into developing missile defense systems, with it completing around 50 launches for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Air Force, Army, and Navy. If the Antares rocket test launch is successful, it will also be diving into the medium-size rockets business. The Antares rocket test launch will also prove beneficial to the NASA’s Wallops Island facility as well. Virginia Officials believe that the publicity generated from the event will entice more space and tech companies to do business with them.

[via Washington Post]

The plan includes multiple improvements to the Roscosmos space program, including building a completely new cosmodrome, which is actually already under construction as we speak. Putin believes that this drive will help Russia’s economy and will improve the country’s position as a space travel competitor.

Other than constructing a new cosmodrome, Russia plans to update its outdated space equipment, including the rockets and capsules, as well as put more focus on unmanned space exploration. Currently, Russia only launches the Soyuz capsule to take astronauts and cosmonauts up to the International Space Station.

Russia still launches all of its manned missions from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is the same place where Gagarin made his historic space flight over 50 years ago, so a new cosmodrome certainly isn’t too much to ask for. When it’s all said and done, Russia will have spent more money on its new space program than any other program in the world.

[via Phys.org]

$78 million of the funding will be for NASA to develop the technologies for this mission. The goal is for NASA to be able to develop an asteroid-grabbing robotic spacecraft by 2017, and have an asteroid in orbit around the moon by 2019. The other $27 million will be used for discovering the best asteroid for this mission. This mission will also compliment NASA’s other projects, including the “science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars,” according to Senator Bill Nelson.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than $105 million to successfully complete the mission. A study done by Caltech’s Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena estimated that it may cost up to $2.6 billion in order to successfully drag the 500-ton asteroid into orbit around the moon. However, the mission would open new doors for space exploration. The Keck mission concept team stated,

“Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the “Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars, and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt.”

The NASA team says that a 25-foot asteroid is the best choice because it’s too small to be a threat to the Earth, and it would just burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA also announced that it has two other missions planned for 2017. One will be the $200 million TESS project, which will scan nearby stars for exoplanets, and the other is the NICER project, which will observe and measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources. For more NASA news, be sure to check out our timeline below.

[via Space.com]

MIT’s TESS project will receive $200 million in funding. The TESS project will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey. It will scan nearby stars for exoplanets. Its primary focus are planets that are similar in size to Earth. TESS will note when these planets transit their host stars from its perspective. George Ricker, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), stated,

TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission. It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.

NASA’s second project, NICER, will be mounted onto the International Space Station. It will observe and measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources, also known as as X-ray timing. The goal for NICER is to allow scientists to better understand neutron stars by exploring the states of matter within the stars and exploring their interior and exterior compositions. The project will be drastically cheaper than the TESS project, costing NASA about $55 million to fund. NICER’s principal investigator is Keith Gendreau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. TESS’s George Ricker will also be a partner in the NICER Mission.

These projects are part of NASA’s Explorer program. These are frequent, low-cost investigations that are relevant to NASA’s astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The first program launched in 1958, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts. Over 90 more missions have been launched since then. John Grunsfeld, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science in Washington stated,

With these missions we will learn about the most extreme states of matter by studying neutron stars, and we will identify many nearby star systems with rocky planets in the habitable zone for further study by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

[via Space.com]

Dark matter particles are what science loosely defines as invisible space-filling matter. This matter outweighs normal matter (what we’re all made of) and is suggested to exist based on astronomers observations of gravitational tugs on galaxies. To detect the existence of dark matter, a lovely Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer detector was installed aboard the International Space Station approximately two years ago.

The announcement today suggests that the AMS detector has shown evidence of cosmic rays colliding with dark matter particles across the universe. Over the past 18 months, the AMS detector has recorded a massive 25 billion cosmic ray signals – from this, Ting says, dark matter may have been detected. As each cosmic ray collides with dark matter, it throws off antimatter particles – positrons – recorded by the AMS.

[image above via HubbleSite]

Unfortunately as this is indeed a scientific experiment, we won’t have enough certainty of the results to say, without a scientific doubt, that dark matter has been detected without further tests. According to Ting, over the next two decades the experiment should – if everything goes smoothly – produce enough data that we’ll be able to say for sure whether or not they’ve actually found dark matter.

[via USA Today]

The experiment at hand simulated the atmosphere of Titan and suggested that complex organic chemistry extends lower into the atmosphere than science previously suspected. These strands are such that the building blocks of life could spring forth – these results point toward prebiotic materials swimming around an area of this moon that makes this heavenly body exciting all over again.

“Scientists previously thought that as we got closer to the surface of Titan, the moon’s atmospheric chemistry was basically inert and dull. Our experiment shows that’s not true. The same kind of light that drives biological chemistry on Earth’s surface could also drive chemistry on Titan, even though Titan receives far less light from the sun and is much colder. Titan is not a sleeping giant in the lower atmosphere, but at least half awake in its chemical activity.” – Murthy Gudipati, lead author of the paper on this subject published at JPL.

The paper published on these findings can be found in Nature Communications this week. Co-author Mark Allen, principal investigator of the JPL Titan team that is a part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, had a bit to say as well.

“We’ve known that Titan’s upper atmosphere is hospitable to the formation of complex organic molecules. Now we know that sunlight in the Titan lower atmosphere can kick-start more complex organic chemistry in liquids and solids rather than just in gases.” – Allen

The result of the experiments conducted by this team show a much larger volume in the bits of Titan’s atmosphere involved in the production of more complex organic chemicals than previously suspected. The full team of researchers involved on this project included Ronen Jacovi, a NASA postdoctoral fellow from Israel; Isabelle Couturier of the University of Provence, Marseille, France; and Antti Lignell, a Finnish Academy of Science postdoctoral fellow from Helsinki at JPL.

NOTE: Straight from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute, the image above is a “true color snapshot” from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft of Titan itself!

[via Michael Interbartolo]

Musk told reporters that SpaceX Dragon part 2 will have big windows so astronauts are able to have a better view, and that there will be side-mounted thruster pods on the capsule. He also said that there will be legs on the bottom of the capsule that will pop out for “land touchdowns”. He wants the capsule to be able to land on the ground instead of in the water. He states that he plans on unveiling the new design sometime later this year.

Musk also spoke with reporters yesterday about the SpaceX Dragon space capsule and the successful completion of its second cargo mission to the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon returned to Earth on March 26th, and made a safe splashdown onto the Pacific Ocean, around 214 miles off the coast of Baja California. The capsule brought back with it 2668 pounds of science samples and equipment.

[via Space.com]

This was the first launch in which a manned flight made an “express” route towards the International Space Station, cutting down flight time from around two days to just six hours. Previously, Russian Progress cargo vehicles have made the express flights, but this is the first time that a manned flight has done so.

After docking to the ISS at approximately 10:30 pm ET, the capsule opened its hatch and was welcomed by the ISS at 12:35 am ET. So, in total, it took around eight hours to get from the ground to inside the space station — a full day’s work. The crew joined ISS Commander Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn of NASA, and Roman Romanenko of Roscosmos, who have in been the ISS since December 21, 2012.

There’s a total of six crew members now aboard the ISS, making it slightly more crowded than before, but Hadfield, Marshburn, and Romanenko will return to Earth in May aboard the Soyuz capsule that Expedition 35 came up in last night. Three additional crew members will join Cassidy and cosmonauts in late May. Cassidy, Vinogradov, and Misurkin are scheduled to return to Earth in September.

The landing was called successful this morning and right around the full 2,668 pounds (1,210 kilograms) will be collected and studied into the future. One of the areas these particular samples are being used is in the study of long-lasting spaceflight’s impact on the human body. Another is the study of plants as they’ve been grown on the space station, these samples being set for aiding in growing better and more fruitful plants in the future both on the space station and here on our planet’s surface.

Also onboard the ship – and shipped back this month – were a collection of crystals grown aboard the ship. With these crystals, NASA scientists hope to aid in the development of new more efficient solar cells as well as semiconductor-based electronics. As NASA reminds us, the SpaceX capsule Dragon “is the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact.”

Elon Musk himself Tweeted at 11:59 AM CST that the recovery ship had secured Dragon. He went on to note that as they powered down all secondary systems, it was apparent that all cargo looked “A ok”. According to the official SpaceX Twitter account, the Dragon capsule made its splashdown at 9:34AM PST – now it’s time to watch the research and see SpaceX and NASA head upward once again!

[Photo via SpaceX]

The audio message will be preserved as part of the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress, and will sit alongside other classic audio recordings, such as Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” and Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” which are some of the most popular pieces of music within the last several decades.

Eisenhower’s message is one out of the 25 recordings selected for induction into the National Recording Registry in 2012. Other recordings include “Saturday Night Fever” from The Bee Gees and “Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto, No. 1.” by Van Cliburn. These pieces were chosen based on their “cultural, artistic, and historic importance and relevance to the aural legacy of the United States.”

While Project SCORE was the world’s first communications satellite in space, it wasn’t the first-ever satellite to make it to space. The world’s first-ever satellite in space was famously the Sputnik 1, which was launched on October 4, 1957, with the US’s first satellite being the Explorer 1, which launched on January 31, 1958.

[via collectSPACE]

The F-1 engines, as they’re called, came off of the famous Saturn V rocket that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. It was the mission that allowed humans to step foot on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969. The rockets have been lying on the bottom of the ocean for more than 40 years, and Bezos and his team have recovered two out of the five engines.

However, Bezos is not 100% sure that the engines are, in fact, from Apollo 11, since the corrosion of the serial numbers will make it difficult to verify, but there’s certainly confidence that the recovered engines are from Apollo 11. Bezos wants to display the engines at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, although NASA may be involved in the decision on where they will ultimately be displayed.

The Saturn V is still the largest and most powerful rocket that was ever built in the US, and each engine is almost 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide. Each engine also weighs over 17,500 pounds. The massive size of the engines produced quite the thrust — around 7.7 million pounds of thrust to be exact, and it had a top speed of over 6,000 mph.

SpaceX has announced that the Merlin 1D has achieved flight qualification status, which the company says is a “major milestone” for the next-generation Merlin engine. The engine had to go through 28 different tests, and it accumulated 1,970 seconds of total test time (just under 33 minutes), which SpaceX says is the equivalent run time of “over 10 full mission durations.”

The engine is now fully qualified to power the Falcon 9 rocket, which is the rocket that has taken the Dragon capsule up to the International Space Station several times now. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company plans to equip the Falcon 9 with Merlin 1D engines sometime this year during another resupply mission to the ISS.

The Merlin 1D is equipped on SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket, which was recently demonstrated on video hovering over the ground and then safely landing on the tarmac. The rocket was able to hover just over 260 feet above the ground, which is over the twice the distance that the rocket was able to achieve back in December.

It’s said that back in August, levels of galactic cosmic rays, which is cosmic radiation from outside of the solar system, spiked to levels that haven’t been seen since Voyager’s launch back in 1977. It was reported that radiation levels spiked by twice as much as they previously were. However, since leaving the solar system, scientists that the intensity has decreased but the cosmic ray levels are still high.

However, many astronomers and scientists are arguing whether or not Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space or simply just entered a separate, undefined region that’s located beyond the solar system. Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University, argues that Voyager 1 is “outside the normal heliosphere” as we speak, which means that the spacecraft has entered interstellar space.

So far, Voyager 1 has been active for 35-and-a-half years, and it’s still communicating with NASA, making it the oldest spacecraft to still be active. The probe’s primary mission officially ended in November 1980 after it successfully explored Saturn and Jupiter, as well as both of the planets’ various moons.

As a part of the deal, the Russians will be providing the rockets for both missions in 2016 and 2018, while the Europeans will be providing the orbiter and the rover. The orbiter will study the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Mars. For the 2018 mission, the Europeans will provide the carrier and the ExoMars rover, which will be tasked with the mission to look for signs of life on the Red Planet.

However, what’s perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this proposed rover is that it will be able to dig up samples from as deep as 6.5 feet beneath the surface of Mars, which will be the deepest that any rover has ever dug. The ESA says that, by doing this, the rover will be able to collect samples “that have been shielded from the harsh conditions of the surface, where radiation and oxidants can destroy organic materials.”

NASA actually pulled out of the ExoMars program last year, but while they’re no longer a part of it, the ESA said that NASA will still contribute to the project by providing some communications software, as well as engineering support during the missions. Other details haven’t yet been discussed, but we’re excited nonetheless.

[via Space.com]

Scientists have identified some key components in the rock samples that are critical to sustain life, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. The sample is from the hole that Curiosity drilled near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater last month. The rover took the dust that was produced from the hole in order to test it effectively.

The image above compares two rocks, the one on the left seen by NASA’s Opportunity rover and the one on the right seen by the Curiosity rover at two different locations on Mars. Scientists think the particles in the rock on the left were formed from water, as were the darker bumps all over the rock.

Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program says that based on the evidence found and from what scientists know so far, Mars could have very well likely supported a habitable environment at some point. Scientists found a mixture of oxidized and non-oxidized chemicals, which provides evidence that proves a similar method of how microbes on Earth live.

NASA tweeted the news briefing announcement today, and it’ll be live in about an hour as of the time of this writing (watch it here). We’ll be seeing four NASA officials at the briefing, including Michael Meyer who is the lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Program, John Grotzinger who is the Curiosity project scientist, David Blake who is the principal investigator for Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy investigation, and Paul Mahaffy who is the principal investigator for Curiosity’s Sample Analysis.

Based on the titles of these four gentlemen, it looks like NASA may also talk about the results from the recent hole drilling on the surface of Mars. We’re not sure how big the news is or whether or not they’ll be announcing some staggering results that came from the soil sample, but we’ll be paying attention to see if anything good comes up from the discussion.

Since the computer malfunction on Curiosity, NASA has announced that it’ll be applying a couple of software patches to the computer, which should hopefully get it back up and running to 100% status. In the meantime, NASA switched over the backup computer. While it didn’t cause any major problems, NASA says that their timeline for experiments were pushed back a week.

The SpaceX Grasshopper was tested at the company’s rocket development facility located in McGregor, Texas. The Grasshopper has come a long way since its first test, where it only flew up about 8.2 feet. SpaceX is also improving Grasshopper’s landing, with this latest test showing Grasshopper’s most accurate landing results as of late. This is all progress for SpaceX, who wants to be able to create a rocket that can survive re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere and be able to land back on the launch pad intact.

Elon Musk has high hopes for SpaceX’s reusable rockets. He believes that reusable rockets will provide a “hundred-fold decrease in the cost of space flight”, and that they will open up the possibility of humanity becoming a multi-planetary species. He says that it isn’t the cost of fuel and oxygen that’s holding back the future of space travel, but the wasted cost of having to throw away a rocket after one use.

SpaceX hopes to get more businesses interested in the space industry. With demonstrations like these, the company hopes to get businesses excited about the future of space travel, which would result in more funding for future projects. Currently, 1/4 of SpaceX’s launches are composed of NASA assignments, while the other 3/4 are for commercial use. With the advancement of creating reusable rockets, Musk hopes that in his lifetime, man will have stepped foot on Mars at least once.

[via Space Answers]

Musk says that fuel and oxygen are hardly the biggest costs of space travel. They only amount to 0.9% of the total cost of the rocket. If SpaceX is able to create a reusable rocket, they would be able to provide a “massive hundred-fold derease in the cost of space flight.” Musk says that SpaceX’s goal has been to expand humanity beyond Earth and turn it into a “multi-planetary species.” He continues to say that all other forms of transportation that humans use are reusable, so why not rockets?

The idea of SpaceX came to Musk when he was trying to donate money to NASA. He wanted NASA to start a greenhouse on Mars that would show that life could exist on that planet. Musk hoped that the project would increase NASA’s federal budget. He had this idea where there’d be a greenhouse on Mars with “green plants on red background”, which would be the “money shot”. The project fell through, but because of it, SpaceX was born.

SpaceX is now very successful, with 1/4 of its launches being for NASA, and the other 3/4 being for commercial businesses. Musk says that the main goals of SpaceX was to get people “excited, and sending (things) to Mars, and increasing NASA’s budget. Today NASA’s our biggest customer.” SpaceX is also working on building a commercial space port in Brownsville Texas, making it the third launch site for the company. There are just some legislative barriers the company has to go through before it can begin working on the project.

[via VentureBeat]