A famous picture in the English edition of Newton’s “Principia” shows cannon balls being fired from the top of a mountain. If they go fast enough, their trajectory curves downward no more steeply than…
Lunar heritage sites such as Tranquility Base – shown here with Buzz Aldrin in 1969 – must be protected … but a US bill is not appropriate.
NASA/Neil A. Armstrong
With India and China planning lunar surface missions, privately-funded space entrepreneurs competing for the US$40 million Google Lunar X Prize and discussions around lunar mining intensifying, working…
Born in space: I’d rather not come down to Earth.
geniusdevil
Why send jellyfish to space? Well, because it’s awesome which is true of anything involving space. But mostly because of little crystals that they keep in their bodies, and what these crystals can tell…
American multi-millionaire and “space tourist” Dennis Tito plans to help fund a trip to Mars for two intrepid astronauts – as you may have read about on The Conversation. But they won’t be stopping – just…
Is sending “oldies” to Mars an acceptable sacrifice – or a case of “voluntary euthanasia”?
Be-Younger.com
Tourist “astronaut” millionaire Dennis Tito wants to send an “older couple” to Mars. Would this be a stunt by an enthusiast or a meaningful breakthrough in space exploration? Being elderly myself, I have…
NASA’s RASSOR will be able to climb hills and, more importantly, extract water, ice and fuel from lunar soil.
NASA
Earlier this week, NASA announced the development of a mining robot called RASSOR: the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot. RASSOR has been designed to assist in extracting water, ice and…
We could be engaged in off-Earth mining within a decade.
puuikibeach/Flickr
The prospect of people settling away from Earth has been a topic for dreamers and visionaries for some time. But if it’s ever to happen for real, there needs to be more than starry-eyed optimism. There…
Space missions have a long tradition of Christmas celebration.
Wikimedia Commons
Christmas - whether you’re religious or not - is a time when people gather their families together to reinforce the bonds that make us human. In the era of modern telecommunications, distance no longer…
Voyager 1 has come across an unexpected region of the solar system - a “magnetic superhighway”.
NASA
At 18.5 billion kilometres from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe is the most distant human-made object ever to leave our planet. And now the spacecraft, which was launched in September 1977, has discovered…
If you’re expecting the next few decades to yield many crewed space missions, you shouldn’t hold your breath.
pasukaru76
The recent passing of Neil Armstrong – the first human to step foot on the moon – combined with recent Russian plans to build a base on the moon, provides a good opportunity to pause and consider the future…
The first pictures taken by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover after its successful landing on Mars.
Michael Nelson/EPA
The Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as the Curiosity rover, has safely landed on the red planet. While NASA engineers can now breath a sigh of relief, for a small army of people, the work on Mars…
When Curiosity lands on Mars next Monday, expect the social media buzz to be out of this world.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Social media is the new frontier for space exploration, shaping an age of innovative public participation in space missions. While online communities are a-Twitter about NBC’s poor Olympic coverage, there’s…
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stands in front of a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX’s launch site in Florida.
SpaceX
Late tomorrow evening (AEST), all going well, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A few days after launch the craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space…
Where there’s mineral wealth, people always follow.
MGM
As history has repeatedly shown, where there are valuable minerals to be unearthed, adventurous humans will arrive in droves – even if it means battling extreme conditions and risking life and limb. So…
When we start building structures outside Earth, the raw materials will likely come from asteroids.
Planetary Resources
There will be a future mining boom, as heralded in recent media stories. But this mining will take place in a location even more hostile than the Australian Outback – space. More specifically, the ore…
Russia is no stranger to ambitious space exploration – and has produced several notable firsts.
Maxim Shipenkov/ EPA
For decades, the Soviet Union was a major player in the exploration of space, famously locking horns with the US in the “Space Race” – a competition for orbital supremacy and solar system exploration throughout…
Does the US suffer from its desire to go it alone in space?
NASA
In its newly released budget request to Congress, the Obama Administration is seeking to reduce NASA’s funding by US$59m to US$17.7 billion – a reduction of just 0.03%, not that you would know that from…
Another election campaign, another out-of-this-world promise.
Erik S. Lesser/EPA
In Florida last week, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich asserted that, under his leadership, the US would establish a “permanent moon base” by 2020. What’s more, he claimed, “it will be American…
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
It seems we’re about to come one step closer to putting man (and woman) on Mars. Is this exciting? Of course it is. Nothing fires the imagination quite like the prospect of walking around on a planet other…