Lifeboat Foundation

NASA’s most recent Moon mission is stoking the flames of a burgeoning lunar economy.

Today, the number of confirmed exoplanets stands at 5,197 in 3,888 planetary systems, with another 8,992 candidates awaiting confirmation.

The Solaris program will study space-based solar power amid rising energy concerns.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to approve a three-year study to determine whether sending huge solar farms into space could effectively meet the world’s energy demands, a report from the BBC reveals.

So, if all goes to plan, the technology could one day harvest massive amounts of energy from space — enough to power millions of homes.

Continue reading “The ESA aims to make 24/7 space-based solar energy harvesting a reality” »

NASA’s unpiloted Orion moonship, sailing smoothly toward a remote lunar orbit after a spectacular low-altitude flyby Monday, is operating in near-flawless fashion, mission managers reported Monday, out-performing expectations on a flight to pave the way toward the first piloted mission in 2024.

An analysis of the huge Space Launch System rocket that boosted the Orion capsule on its way early Wednesday showed it performed almost exactly as expected, taking off atop 8.8 million pounds of thrust and producing a ground-shaking shock wave that literally blew the doors off launch pad elevators.

The core stage’s four upgraded space shuttle main engines and twin solid-fuel boosters propelled the 322-foot-tall rocket out of the atmosphere and into space almost exactly as planned. At main engine cutoff, the SLS was within 3 miles of its target altitude and within 5 mph of the predicted velocity.

It will be the sight of astronauts on the moon, their gaze drawn to the strange movements of planet Earth and its sun, something that is sure to be an amusing sight for future NASA astronauts at the moon’s south pole.

This visualization shows the unusual movements of the Earth and the Sun as seen from the South Pole of the Moon. The animation compresses three months (a little over three lunar days) into two minutes. The virtual camera is on the rim of the Shackleton crater, partially visible in the lower right, and is pointed at Earth. The mountain on the horizon, some 85 miles away, is unofficially known as Mons Malapert.

Here, the Sun glides across the horizon, never more than 1.5 degrees above or below it, while the Earth bobs up and down, never straying from 0° longitude. The Earth appears to be upside down and spinning backward. The Sun’s perpetually low angle casts extremely long swirling shadows over the rugged lunar terrain.

Continue reading “This is what the Earth looks like rotating from the Moon… This is how” »

Watch live as NASA’s Orion spacecraft performs a close approach of the lunar surface on its way to a distant retrograde orbit, a highly stable orbit thousand…

About 450 light years away, a star is being born. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken an image of a protostar – an object that is massive enough to become a star but hasn’t yet begun the process of nuclear fusion – revealing details that have never been seen before.

This protostar is in an area called the Taurus star-forming region, embedded within a dark cloud of dust and gas called L1527. It is only about 100,000 years old, putting it in the first stage of star formation, in which it is still slightly fluffy and lopsided. Over the next few million years, it will continue to compress under its own gravitational pull and then begin to fuse hydrogen into helium and become a fully fledged star.

Ancient bacteria might be sleeping beneath the surface of Mars, where it has been shielded from the harsh radiation of space for millions of years, according to new research.

While no evidence of life has been found on the red planet, researchers simulated conditions on Mars in a lab to see how bacteria and fungi could survive. The scientists were surprised to discover that bacteria could likely survive for 280 million years if it was buried and protected from the ionizing radiation and solar particles that bombard the Martian surface.

The findings suggested that if life ever existed on Mars, the dormant evidence of it might still be located in the planet’s subsurface — a place that future missions could explore as they drill into Martian soil.