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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources for future mining.  Since its establishment in the 1870s, the USGS has focused pretty much solely on Earth. But now it's also investigating what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals. The agency seeks to portray accurately how humanity could exploit off-Earth assets — a no-nonsense approach that contrasts with the pie-in-the-sky estimates of trillions of dollars of profit proffered by some less scientifically minded space-mining advocates.Proven expertise This past June, several USGS experts took part in a Space Resources Roundtable held at...

Many scientists firmly believe that our universe and Solar System are billions of years old. However, massive data recorded by 50 years' worth of unmanned probes traversing space shows without a doubt that the planets with their moons and comets are actually very young. Our sun powers through its nuclear fuel, and as such it slowly changes constitution. Famed solar astronomer John A. Eddy was quoted, and others in his field believe billions of years ago the sun was dimmer and thus the Earth became a frozen ball. But Mr. Eddy has also recognized that all our information about the...

After last month's impressive G3 geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection, it is time to welcome back a familiar solar feature on our nearest star today. We have a small coronal hole facing our planet today. The high speed solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole will likely take about three days to arrive at Earth which means the solar wind stream should impact Earth somewhere this Friday, 7 September. Active geomagnetic conditions are likely which is great news for northern hemisphere high latitude sky watchers who finally enjoy proper dark nights again.

The seven planets orbiting the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 are mostly rocky, with some potentially holding more liquid water than Earth. New research reveals the density of the worlds within this crowded system to a greater precision than ever before. The findings reveal that some of the planets could have up to 5 percent of their mass in liquid water form, about 250 times as much water as found in Earth's oceans. "All the TRAPPIST-1 planets are very Earth-like — they have a solid core, surrounded by an atmosphere," In addition to narrowing down the composition of the exoplanets, the...

The image has been doing the rounds over the past few days, racking up tens of thousands of views and retweets on social media. But the image was created using computer graphics. Some people have confused the image for a real photo simply because it appeared on the NASA website, but the description of the image makes it clear that it’s just an artist’s depiction: This artist’s concept shows an over-the-shoulder view of Cassini making one of its Grand Finale dives over Saturn. The Cassini probe was a joint project between NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), and the Italian...

By hacking a domestic knitting machine, a software engineer advanced modern knitting and made a massive equatorial star map in tapestry form. Australian software engineer Sarah Spencer spent years hacking and programming a 1980s domestic knitting machine for fun. This hobby grew into much more, however, as Spencer developed a new computer algorithm that did something never before accomplished with such machines. Her accomplishment — knitting with bird's-eye backing using one knit per pixel in three colors — might not mean much to anyone outside of the knitting community. But this achievement allowed Spencer to make something truly out of...

One of the key differences between the two is that SpaceX was awarded $2.6 billion, while Boeing receiving $4.2 billion. SpaceX completed a pad abort test in 2015, while Boeing hopes to be able to achieve this milestone possibly this year. Boeing's abort test had been scheduled for this summer, but it was delayed due to a leak of highly-toxic hydrazine from one of the abort engines. The leak occurred after the command was issued to shut down the engines. Several of the abort engine valves failed to fully close. As early as July 11, 2018, NASA internally believed (as...

Mars, NASA NASA Is Preparing A 17 Year Old Girl To Become The First Human On Mars Lauren WebberJuly 10, 2018, 10:15 amJuly 10, 2018 The 17-year-old is training to be on the first NASA trip to the red planet, where she’ll spend two to three years. (Photo: NASA Blueberry) Alyssa Carson fell in love with space when she was only 3 years old and now is making it her life’s work to be the first human to land on Mars.The 17-year-old is training to be on the first NASA trip to the Red Planet, where she says she’ll...

MU69 is a relatively small Kuiper Belt object. It is estimated to have a diameter of 30 miles (48 km) — that’s more than 10 times larger and 1,000 times more massive than typical comets, but only about 0.5 to 1% of the size of the dwarf planet Pluto. This object was discovered in June 2014 by astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.Also known as PT1 and 1110113Y, and nicknamed Ultima Thule, MU69 orbits the Sun once every 293 years at a distance of more than 4 billion miles (6.5 billion km) from Earth.The MU69 flyby will be the...

Close encounters with medium-size black holes can reanimate dead stars, if only momentarily, a new study suggests. A team of astronomers performed computer simulations to determine what happens when a burned-out stellar corpse known as a white dwarf passes close to an intermediate-mass black hole — one that harbors between 1,000 and 10,000 times the mass of Earth's sun. The researchers determined that the black hole's powerful gravity can stretch and distort the white dwarf's previously inert innards so dramatically that nuclear-fusion processes can reignite for a few seconds, converting helium, carbon and oxygen into heavier elements such as iron....

After NASA's New Horizons spacecraft collected a trove of data from its six-month-long flyby of Pluto, it set its sights on a much smaller object in the Kuiper Belt -- an object dubbed 2014 MU69. Scientists believe MU69 will likely be a rather preserved outer solar system object, one that could provide clues as to how dwarf planets like Pluto may have formed billions of years ago. Now the New Horizons team reports that it has snapped a picture of its distance target and it did so weeks before MU69 was expected to be visible to the spacecraft. New...

Forget deflecting asteroids from hitting Earth—some engineers are drawing up a strategy to steer asteroids toward us, so our atmosphere can act as a giant catching mitt for resource-rich space rocks. What might sound like a crazy idea is actually quite business savvy, according to Minghu Tan, a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom who co-authored the new study. That’s because such near-Earth asteroids can host supplies, such as water and precious metals, that could support future human missions to space. But other scientists are skeptical that the concept will ever get off the ground....

More than 200 people across Missouri and seven other states spotted a fireball meteor last night light as it lit up the Midwestern sky, KMOV reports. The American Meteor Society posted observer accounts and several videos of the sighting to its website Tuesday. "It was super bright..." said Lisa B. in Ellisville, Missouri, who filed a report with the group. "We said, what IS that?!? Omg it's a fireball, I have to get my camera. Then tried to open my camera and the trail was all that was left." Some observers said the meteor appeared to break up into several...

The newly-discovered object, BST1047+1156, is part of a collection of about 24 galaxies called the Leo I group (also known as the M96 group). “It was so faint he hardly saw it. But I flagged it for Case Western Reserve University’s Professor Chris Mihos, with whom I’d been working the past two weeks, and explored the coordinates further,” Carr said.“What we found pointed to the detection of a new galaxy about 37 million light-years away.”BST1047+1156 has a radius of about 6,500 light-years and is approximately 3 billion years old.The object has two tidal tails and is found embedded within diffuse...

Earth is set for another spooky encounter with a 700 metre asteroid that looks uncannily like a skull. The space rock first passed ‘close’ to our planet at 78,000mph (125,500km/h) at a distance of 310,000 miles (499,000km) on October 31, 2015, just in time for Halloween. Now, it’s set to make a return in November 2018. This fall, the space rock, known as 2015 TB145, will flyby at a less dramatic distance than the last one. The asteroid will zoom past the planet at about 105 Earth-moon distances, compared to just under 1.3 lunar distances last time around. Astronomers analysing...

Well made YouTube video on the relationship of Immanuel Velikovsky and the Electric Universe. Velikovsky, Hero or Villain? Plasma Cosmology Astronomy Many of the predictions made by Velikovsky have proven true... while the traditional astronomers and cosmologists are repeatedly surprised by the findings.

Giacobini-Zinner’s return in 2018 is a promising one as it passes the Earth at a distance of 0.39 au. In June, 2018, 21p will be observable from modest sized telescopes sitting in the constellation of Cygnus reaching a brightness of magnitude 11 by month end. Although for many in the northern hemisphere, the sky will not reach true astronomical darkness all month. Between 17-21 June, the comet will skim past the ‘Mexico’ region of the North America nebula making for a nice widefield shot for photographers (again battling the twilight). The comet will then brighten rapidly through July and August by which time...

After inspecting asteroid Ryugu for two months, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed the sites where the Hayabusa2 spacecraft will touchdown to collect a sample to bring back to Earth—and also where it will drop the first two of its planned landing probes. … Hayabusa2 is the follow-up mission to Hayabusa, a probe that was the first to collect samples from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth in 2010.... Since then, Hayabusa2 has been hovering a few tens of kilometres above the space rock and scanning its surface as it revolves every seven-and-a-half hours. The spacecraft...

The space agency said the 2016 NF23 is hurtling rapidly at a speed of around 20,000mph. At that speed, it is around 15 times faster than the 1,354mph the retired Concorde travelled at. The 2016 NF23 also measures up to a jaw-dropping 160metres. At that size, it is bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt which measures 139m. It is listed on NASA's Earth Close Approaches page, despite whizzing by at a distance of 3million miles away. But in space terms, it is considered close enough that it will pay attention to it. At 160m, it is considered...

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft began its final approach toward the big near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Friday (Aug. 17), NASA officials said. The milestone also marks the official start of OSIRIS-REx's "asteroid operations" mission phase, they added. OSIRIS-REx is still about 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Bennu and won't arrive in orbit around the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) space rock until Dec. 3. The $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission — whose name is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — launched on Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. If all goes according to...