Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

The Making of ‘Pillars of Creation,’ One of the Most Amazing Images of Our Universe

Apr 7
2018

Pretty Scientific is a new Gizmodo series where we explore how the best images in science were created and why.

Three pillars of gas and dust sit among stars like towers of billowing smoke. It would take several years for light to cross from the top to the bottom of these dusty columns. This striking image from the Hubble Space Telescope remains, to this day, one of the most well-known astronomical images ever taken.

But if you were to peer at the Pillars of Creation, part of the Eagle Nebula, through your own telescope, you wouldn’t see the same thing. The images you typically see of outer space are colorized and processed in order to bring out the detail and highlight the most relevant parts for scientific study. The popularity of the Pillars of Creation may have forever changed how astronomers present images of space to the public.

Orion Span says it’ll put space hotel in orbit by 2022, but some details are up in the air

Posted by Genevieve Klien in habitats, space

Apr 7
2018

The plan to launch the module into space, and take reservations from customers for multimillion-dollar trips, was announced today at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, Calif.

Orion Span says its hotel habitat, dubbed Aurora Station, will be about the size of a large private jet’s cabin, with 5,650 cubic feet of pressurized space. It’ll accommodate up to six residents at a time, including two professional crew members.

The flight plan calls for the module to be launched into a 200-mile-high orbit in late 2021, and host its first guests in 2022.

1 thought on “The World’s First Floating Space Hotel Is Coming”

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in space

Apr 7
2018

Slated to open in 2021, Aurora Station is now taking reservations.

The physics that tells us what the Universe is made of

Posted by Genevieve Klien in particle physics, space

Apr 7
2018

Everything around us is made of atoms, but it turns out that the building blocks of the Universe are far stranger than that.

There’s a Detectable Human-Made Barrier Surrounding Earth

Posted by Michael Lance in space

Apr 7
2018

We are changing space itself.

In 2017, NASA space probes detected a massive, human-made ‘barrier’ surrounding Earth.

And tests have confirmed that it’s actually having an effect on space weather far beyond our planet’s atmosphere.

That means we’re not just changing Earth so severely, scientists are calling for a whole new geological epoch to be named after us — our activities have been changing space too.

To Understand the Atmospheres of Distant Exoplanets, Look to Your Car Engine

Posted by Michael Lance in space, transportation

Apr 7
2018

Your car can’t transport you to other worlds, but it could help us understand them.

French researchers have discovered that the models used to simulate how car engines produce pollutants can also model the atmospheres of hot exoplanets.

This “Ancient Cold Front” in the Perseus Galaxy Shows an Ominous Winter

Posted by Genevieve Klien in space

Apr 4
2018

New research from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the Perseus galaxy cluster is experiencing a 5 billion-year-old cold front that has plummeted through the region at speeds of 300,000 miles per hour. It stretches about 2 million light-years across, and has remained very well-defined.

What the Spinning Chair at Space Camp is Actually For

Posted by Genevieve Klien in space

Apr 4
2018

If you’re of a certain age, you probably know know Huntsville, Alabama’s Space Camp best as a prize for winning a ridiculous competition show. And if you ever obsessed over going on that cosmic retreat, you probably wanted to get on that weird spinning chair they always showed in the clips. It’s a serious looking device at a serious facility–what the heck is it for?

I was recently lucky enough to make a childhood dream come true and zipped up my flight suit for a shot at Space Camp. There, as I explain in the video above, I learned that the spinning chair has a more formal name: the Multi Axis Trainer, or MAT. It’s used to give riders a feeling of what it’s like to uncontrollably tumble through space.

Press Room

Posted by Genevieve Klien in space

Apr 3
2018

NASA has selected 24 new Fellows for its prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). The program enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrument development. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support.

The new NHFP preserves the legacy of NASA’s previous postdoctoral fellowship programs, the Hubble, Einstein and Sagan Fellowships. Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to three broad scientific questions NASA has sought to answer about the universe:

A close galactic pair

Posted by Genevieve Klien in space

Apr 3
2018

This image displays the galaxies NGC 4302 — seen edge-on — and NGC 4298, both located 55 million light-years away. They were observed by Hubble to celebrate its 27th year in orbit.

The galaxy NGC 4298 is seen almost face-on, allowing us to see its spiral arms and the blue patches of ongoing star formation and young stars. In the edge-on disc of NGC 4302 huge swathes of dust are responsible for the mottled brown patterns, but a burst of blue to the left side of the galaxy indicates a region of extremely vigorous star formation.

The image is a mosaic of four separate captures from Hubble, taken between 2 and 22 January 2017, that have been stitched together to give this amazing field of view. Two different types of light emitted by the galaxies — visible and near-infrared — have been combined to give a rich and colourful image. This light was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, one of the telescope’s most advanced imaging instruments.