SPACE SHARES

“Today, we are announcing another critical step toward launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on space systems built by American companies,”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida [August 3, 2012]

WE’RE GOING BACK TO SPACE, BABY! !!!!

Source nasa.gov

NASA's Next Space Telescope Could 'Sniff' Out Alien Planets

lonecenturion:

Space.com

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is a sophisticated new observatory that is being designed to unlock some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, but it could also play a key role in the hunt for alien planets, scientists said.

The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is slated to launch in 2018, will orbit 930,000 miles (1,500,000 kilometers) from Earth, in a region called the Lagrange Point 2. Here, the gravitational forces from the Earth and the sun essentially cancel each other out, so JWST will be able to maintain a stable orbit without using up too much energy.

From this distant orbital perch, JWST will be able to stare uninterrupted at stars with sensitive infrared instruments. The telescope’s powerful tools could let astronomers “sniff” the atmospheres of alien planets and break down their molecular composition.

SPACE.com recently sat down with David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., to talk about how JWST could be a critical addition to the field of exoplanet research

(via theaggiephysicist)

Reblogged from The Aggie Physicist

theatlantic: Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel With today’s best propulsion technology, chemical rockets, it would take between 50 and a 100 millennia to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The ideas we have about how to expedite such a journey are just that: ideas. They belong to the realm of speculation. Nonetheless, they are beginning to take on an empirical glow. To be sure, the bundle of technologies that could conceivably send a spacecraft to another star won’t be here within the decade, or even within several, but neither are those technologies mere magical realism — indeed, planning for their development has begun in earnest. Read more.

theatlantic:

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel

With today’s best propulsion technology, chemical rockets, it would take between 50 and a 100 millennia to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The ideas we have about how to expedite such a journey are just that: ideas. They belong to the realm of speculation. Nonetheless, they are beginning to take on an empirical glow. To be sure, the bundle of technologies that could conceivably send a spacecraft to another star won’t be here within the decade, or even within several, but neither are those technologies mere magical realism — indeed, planning for their development has begun in earnest.

Read more.

Reblogged from The Atlantic