Tag Archives | Solar System

Mars One To Begin Application Process For One-Way Tickets To Mars

By on April 17, 2013 in News 0

mars oneThe Mars One website lists necessary traits to be eligible, including mid-range height, blood pressure below 140/90, and a curious, resilient personality. The New York Daily News explains:

Mars One, the private company that hopes to land a person on the surface of the red planet by 2023, will begin accepting videos made by prospective astronauts along with a $25 application fee that will go toward funding the ambitious colonization project.

“We expect a million applications with 1-minute videos,” said Bas Lansdorp, Mars One co-founder. So far, 45,000 people have registered on the company’s mailing list, and 10,000 aspiring astronauts have expressed a desire to apply.

The 24 astronauts will be selected to establish a permanent Martian colony, as there are no current plans for a return journey from Mars. At a New York news conference scheduled for April 22, Mars One will further detail how those who are ready to abandon Earth can proceed.

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The Nazi Plan To Build A Deadly Sun-Reflecting Space Mirror

By on April 5, 2013 in News 0

On a more peaceful note, the device would also be used to turn the Arctic and Antarctic poles into verdant gardens. Via io9:

In 1945, Life magazine revealed how “U.S. Army technical experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a ‘sun gun’…a gigantic orbital mirror that would “focus the sun’s rays to a scorching point on the earth’s surface.” The German army, readers were told, “hoped to use such a mirror to burn an enemy city or to boil part of an ocean.”

The idea had been originally proposed by the seminal rocket scientist Hermann Oberth in 1923. Oberth thought it might take ten to fifteen years to assemble a complete mirror at a cost of $3 billion. The pressure of sunlight on the vast surface would be used to maneuver it in orbit, with steering accomplished by adjusting the angles of the individual mirrors.

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NASA’s Strangest UFO Anomalies Caught On Film

By on March 16, 2013 in News 19

From LunaCognita, a handy overview of extraterrestrial strangeness:

This compilation includes many of my favorite NASA UFO encounters/sightings that I have archived over the years. All of these examples (with the exception of the second-to-last one) were captured on film by NASA astronauts or Russian Cosmonauts over the past half-century – showing many amazing examples from different eras – Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project, Skylab, STS, the ISS, plus a couple Russian-source additions from their unmanned Zond and Mir Space Station programs as well thrown in to round things out.

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NASA Planning Mission To Search For Life On Jupiter’s Moon Europa

By on February 21, 2013 in News 6

Mars gets the attention, but apparently a moon in the far reaches of our solar system is the spot with the greatest chance of harboring extraterrestrial beings. Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

US astronomers looking for life in the solar system believe that Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, which has an ocean, is much more promising than desert-covered Mars, which is currently the focus of the US government’s attention.

“Europa is the most likely place in our solar system beyond Earth to possess …. life,” said Robert Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Europa is the most promising in terms of habitability because of its relatively thin ice shelf and an ocean … And we know there are oxidants on the surface of Europa.”

The JPL and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland developed a new exploration project named Clipper with a total coast of two billion US dollars minus the launch.

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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Unexplained Shiny Object On Mars

By on February 8, 2013 in News 16

A mineral deposit? Crystal formation? Abandoned alien ray gun? Universe Today writes:

The Curiosity Mars rover has imaged a small metallic-looking protuberance which projects a shadow on the rock below. The image was taken with the right Mastcam on Curiosity on Sol 173 — January 30, 2013 here on Earth — and was pointed out to us by Elisabetta Bonora, an image editing enthusiast from Italy.

The protuberance seems different than the rock on which it sits – it could be composed of material more resistant to erosion than the rest and similar material could be within the rock, or it could be something that is “grown” on the rock. It looks fairly smooth, and is not covered by dust as is the case for metal surfaces that tend to clean easily.

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Did NASA Delete Possible UFO Evidence From Its Archives?

By on January 23, 2013 in News 5

Is NASA covering its tracks in regards to images that could reveal what is truly out there? Or simply reorganizing its archives of photos of space trash? io9 writes:

UFOlogists are freaking out today over the removal of several photos from a NASA archive. These photos [see right] have been used by various UFO groups to support their belief that aliens have been visiting Earth and governments are covering it up. NASA identifies these as images of “space debris.”

Believers say the removal of the photos is tantamount to admitting that NASA is trying to cover up extraterrestrial visitors. More likely is that they were removed after the space agency realized that they were fueling alien conspiracy theories.

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First ‘Alien Earth’ Likely To Be Spotted In 2013, Scientists Say

By on December 31, 2012 in News 3

Finally, we’ll have a spot for humanity to open a second franchise? Live Science writes:

The first truly Earth-like alien planet is likely to be spotted next year, an epic discovery that would cause humanity to reassess its place in the universe. “I’m very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year,” said Abel Mendez, who runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995. Since they, they’ve spotted more than 800 worlds beyond our own solar system, and many more candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations. A number of exoplanets found over the last few years share one or two key traits with our own world — such as size or inferred surface temperature — but they have yet to bag a bona fide “alien Earth.”

NASA’s prolific Kepler Space Telescope, for example, has flagged more than 2,300 potential planets since its March 2009 launch.

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New Photos Suggest That Planet Mercury Is Hollow

By on December 23, 2012 in News 6

The hollows appear to have formed relatively recently. The next question is, what lies inside? Phys.org writes:

A recent image acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the interior of Eminescu, a youngish 80-mile wide crater just north of Mercury’s equator. Eminescu made science headlines last year with MESSENGER’s discovery of curious eroded blotches called “hollows” scattered across its interior and surrounding its central peak, and now it looks like the spacecraft may have spotted some of these strange features in their earliest stages of formation along the inner edge of the crater’s rim.

First announced in September 2011, hollows have now been identified in many areas across Mercury. The lack of craters within hollows indicates that they are relatively young. It was suggested that they may be the result of an ongoing process on Mercury.

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Mars One Project Has More Than 1,000 Volunteers For A One-Way Trip To Mars

By on December 10, 2012 in News 11

The previously discussed Mars One project may not be the favorite in the race to devise a feasible plan for colonization of the Red Planet. But even assuming that most would not follow through, it’s astounding that so many people are so eager to get off of Earth. Via Yahoo! News UK:

The Mars One organisation has revealed details of its plans to land four astronauts on the Red Planet in 2023, with four additional ‘crew’ arriving every two years. The organisation said that it had had more than 1,000 volunteers for the mission, who emailed in via the foundation’s website.

Selection of the astronauts will begin next year, the Dutch organisation says. The trip to the planned ‘colony’ would be one-way – and the astronaut volunteers will live and die on Mars.

Mars One aims to finance a mission to Mars via donations from corporations, people – and by creating a reality show-style ‘media event’ around the training and selection of its astronauts.

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