Space
NASA / ESA / U. of Va. / STScI / ANU |
Click for video: Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 captures a detailed view of
starbirth in the spiral galaxy M83. Click on the image to watch a zoom-in video.
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The Hubble Space Telescope's new wide-field camera has sent down a picture showing how the "assembly line" of starbirth works in a nearby spiral galaxy.
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Reed Saxon / AP |
LaserMotive's David Bashford, right,
prepares a robotic climber for its
ascent on Wednesday.
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Just days after $1.65 million was won in a NASA-backed rocket contest, it looks as if big money will be awarded in the $2 million Power Beaming Challenge as well.
Like the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, the Power Beaming Challenge is part of NASA's Centennial Challenges, a program aimed at encouraging new technologies that could be adopted by the space agency for future exploration. This particular competition could eventually lay the groundwork for future space elevators - but power-beaming technology is likely to be put to work even if those space elevators are never built.
Teams entered in the challenge have been working on robotic transport systems that can be remotely powered by laser beams to climb up a long steel cable. The contest, part of the Space Elevator Games managed by the Spaceward Foundation, started up in 2005 and has been getting progressively harder every year.
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The countdown is ticking toward some multibillion-dollar decisions on America's future in space, as explained in my big-picture analysis today. When the space shuttle fleet is retired, will NASA stay the course with its Ares rocket development effort, or will it emphasize buying seats on other people's spaceships instead? It's a question that touches upon technical as well as political complexities.
Want to feel like an insider? Here are some Web sites that give you countdown status reports on the space debate:
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NGLLC / X Prize Foundation |
Click for video: Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket rises above the Mojave
Desert during its prize-winning flight. Click on the image to watch a video report on
the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge from msnbc.com's Dara Brown.
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California-based Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket prototype has won a million-dollar prize from NASA, edging out its closest competitor by just a couple of feet.
NASA announced today that the Masten team's "try, try again" effort at California's Mojave Air and Space Port won the top prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 2 contest. The Xoie rocket's final flight on Friday was good enough to best Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, which qualified for the prize with its Scorpius rocket in September.
NASA said Armadillo would receive the Level 2 contest's $500,000 second prize.
A different flight by a different rocket, known as Xombie, earned Masten the $150,000 second-place prize in the Lunar Lander Challenge's less ambitious Level 1 contest. Armadillo won the $350,000 top prize in Level 1 last year.
Armadillo and Masten will be awarded a total of $1.65 million at a Washington ceremony on Thursday, NASA said. The ceremony will close out the three-year-old, $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge program.
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Matt York / AP file |
Tourists hear the history behind the Pluto Discovery
Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.
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The first thing you notice about the Lowell Observatory, the place where Pluto was discovered, is that the little guy gets top billing.
The road rises quickly from the city streets of Flagstaff, Ariz., up Mars Hill and on to the entrance to the 115-year-old observatory's grounds. A pillar marks each side of the entryway. One pillar reads "Lowell Observatory," and the other pillar displays a column of nine runes that could have come from a chapter of Dan Brown's latest thriller, "The Lost Symbol."
These symbols stand for the solar system's worlds, and the symbol right on top is a combination of the letter P and L. That stands for Pluto, arguably the most controversial world in the solar system. It also stands for Percival Lowell, the observatory's founder - who was perhaps as controversial in his day as Pluto is today.
If any place on Earth should serve as a shrine to Percival Lowell and Pluto, it would be the 740 acres of forested grounds beyond the pillars. This is the place Lowell selected for his study of the "canals" he thought he saw on Mars. This is where he started the search for a "Planet X" that he was sure existed beyond the orbit of Neptune. This is where young astronomer Clyde Tombaugh followed up on Percival Lowell's predictions by poring through stacks of photographic plates. And this is where Tombaugh's painstaking effort paid off in 1930 with the discovery of Pluto.
It turns out, however, that the Lowell Observatory is about much more than the best-known dwarf planet.
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NASA / ESA / IAA |
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The Hubble Space Telescope's closeup view of the "Jewel Box" star cluster NGC
4755 reveals sapphire blue supergiant stars, one ruby-red supergiant and other
stellar gems. Click on the picture for larger views from the European Hubble team.
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An antique "Jewel Box" in the night sky takes on a new shine in imagery from three of the best telescopes in the world and in space.
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Alan Boyle / msnbc.com |
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Steve Landeene, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority's executive director, points
toward Spaceport America's vertical launch site from a simulated lunar lander pad.
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Is Spaceport America ready to become New Mexico's newest tourist attraction? Mmm, not quite yet. But there's lots of wide open space, lots of potential and lots of hope that the spaceport will spark a domino effect of development and tourist activity.
If the plans succeed, Spaceport America and its surroundings could become a multibillion-dollar center for tourism as well as spaceflight - something akin to Florida's Space Coast with a Wild West twist. If the plans totally flop, the locale could wind up as a $198 million ghost town.
It's up to Steve Landeene, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority's executive director, to make sure those plans don't flop. "You've got to have a lot of vision here," he said.
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Team BonNova |
BonNova's Lauryad rocket blasts off during a test
in January. The team dropped out on Sunday.
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Five days from now, a bunch of no-longer-amateur rocketeers are going to be at least $1.15 million richer, thanks to a NASA-backed contest for lunar lander prototypes. But the identity of the winners is still up in the air.
You need a scorecard to keep track of what's happening in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, which ends this year's launch season on Saturday. Here's a roundup that touches upon the four - oops, make that three - teams in the competition:
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NASA |
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Artwork shows NASA's Ares I rocket lofting an Orion crew vehicle toward orbit.
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For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: That law applies to rocket science, and apparently to an independent review panel's report on NASA's rocket options as well.
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For decades, the cost of doing space science has been astronomically high, but all that will change when suborbital spacecraft start flying. Off-the-cuff calculations suggest doing low-cost research on commercial rocket ships could easily add up to $100 million a year.
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