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If the new space race was like the movies, this week would be The Empires Strikes Back. On Friday, after a weather delay, Nasa launched a very cool space capsule, in what at first blush looked like another Apollo mission. It rose on a massive rocket spewing superheated exhaust like some creature from a Peter Jackson movie. All went well just now – and given the expertise of engineers performing what was essentially an update of a 1970s Apollo mission, that much was expected: a four-seat capsule called Orion will detach any minute now, and soar around the Earth twice,...

[I love the idea of going to Mars. We humans are explorers and pioneers. But if government does this, it will be just too costly, like the Apollo Moon program. Elon Musk of the private SpaceX company already has put rockets into space and he wants to send settlers to Mars, including himself. So since governments have screwed up this planet, how about reserving Mars for free people?!] Breaking: NASA is sending humans to Mars NASA has announced that a test launch of their Orion space capsule will take place on Thursday, in the first step of a mission that...

A meteorite from Mars that landed on Earth in 2011 contains a carbon compound that is biological in origin. (snip) "We cannot and do not want to entirely exclude the possibility that organic carbon within Tissint may be of abiotic origin," Lin wrote, meaning the carbon maybe physical in origin rather than organic -- devoid of life.7 "It could be possible that the organic carbon originated from impacts of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. However, it is not easy to conceive bywhich processes chondritic carbon could have been selectively extracted from the impacting carbonaceous chondrites, selectively removed from the soil and later...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 October 1 Earth Nears Asteroid Toutatis Illustration Credit: E. De Jong and S. Suzuki, JPL, NASA Explanation: On Wednesday, September 29, the Earth came within one million miles of the asteroid Toutatis -- the closest predicted aproach of our fair planet to a sizable asteroid or comet in this century. Coming within one million miles or about 4 times the Earth-Moon distance, Earth would appear to be...

If you're planning to go to the 2014 Annual Fall Meeting of the American Physical Society in Illinois this Saturday, you might be in for a bit of a surprise with the final talk of the day. Because that's when plasma physicist Dr John Brandenburg will present his theory that an ancient civilisation on Mars was wiped out by a nuclear attack from another alien race. In his bizarre theory, Dr Brandenburg says ancient Martians known as Cydonians and Utopians were massacred in the attack - and evidence of the genocide can still be seen today. Back in 2011 the...

For many space-faring nations, ambitions for Mars run broad and deep. Now, add China to the list of countries with Mars in their sights. News reports from China disclosed that country is considering a future Mars rover mission, with a potential 2020 launch date. Additionally came other hints that China may be looking to develop a next-generation heavy-lift launch system. This new project, while early in development, reveals how Chinese aspirations are growing rapidly. Human space flight successes have been followed by recent lunar mission successes of the Yutu lunar rover and the Chang’e-5 T1 test of a sample return...

CHENNAI/BANGALORE: India created history on Wednesday, becoming the first country to successfully get a spacecraft into the Martian orbit on its maiden attempt. Indian Space Research Organisation's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft started orbiting the red planet at 7.47am, but it was only 12 minutes later —because of a time delay in radio signals travelling the 680 million km -- that scientists at Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore, could erupt in joy as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood a happy witness.

Explanation: October 31, 1938 was the day after Martians encountered planet Earth, and everything was calm. Reports of the invasion were revealed to be part of a Halloween radio drama, the now famous broadcast based on H.G. Wells' scifi novel War of the Worlds. On Mars October 20, 2014 was calm too, the day after its close encounter with Comet Siding Spring. Not a hoax, this comet really did come within 86,700 miles or so of Mars, about 1/3 the Earth-Moon distance. Earth's spacecraft and rovers in Mars orbit and on the surface reported no ill effects though, and had...

Explanation: Why would Mars appear to move backwards? Most of the time, the apparent motion of Mars in Earth's sky is in one direction, slow but steady in front of the far distant stars. About every two years, however, the Earth passes Mars as they orbit around the Sun. During the most recent such pass starting late last year, Mars as usual, loomed large and bright. Also during this time, Mars appeared to move backwards in the sky, a phenomenon called retrograde motion. Featured here is a series of images digitally stacked so that all of the stars coincide. Here,...

According to a new NASA study, when America goes back to the moon and on to Mars it will do so with hardware that looks very familiar. NASA has decided to build two new launch systems - both of which will draw upon existing Space Shuttle hardware. One vehicle will be a cargo-only heavy lifter, the other will be used to launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The Plan NASA has essentially completed its Exploration Systems Architecture Study - also known as the "60 day study". Briefings of the study’s conclusions and recommendations will be conducted by Doug Stanley. Stanley led...

And still the strange and intriguing sightings in photos taken by the Mars Curiosity rover keep coming: This time with the image of what looks like a humanoid figure bracketed by three bold, indented parallel lines. UFO Sightings Hotspot reported Oct. 17 that the NASA's Curiosity rover had inadvertently spied a petroglyph -- or rock engraving -- among the rust-colored stones on the Red Planet. The website noted that what looks like an etching in stone, little more than a stylized stick figure, is nearly identical to hundreds of petroglyphs engraved in columns, slabs, and rocks all over planet...

A comet from the outer reaches of the solar system is due to give Mars a close shave on Sunday (Oct. 19), and you can watch the flyby live online. While Comet Siding Spring (also called Comet C/2013 A1) isn't easy to spot from Earth, a couple different astronomy organizations will be tracking the comet as it flies 87,000 miles (139,500 kilometers) from Mars at 2:27 p.m. EDT (1827 GMT) on Sunday. The comet will fly three times closer to Mars than the moon is to Earth.

Jackie stated that she used to work at NASA and handled the down-linked telemetry, back in 1979. States that one night, while watching the live feed coming from the Viking Rover on Mars, that she saw two men in suits, along with some colleagues, stroll in from the horizon, and then proceeded to walk over to the Viking Lander.

A new study says that the Mars One concept could fail on several points: oxygen levels could skyrocket unsafely. Using the local resources to generate habitability is unproven. The technology is expensive. But the founder of Mars One says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student study is based on the wrong assumptions. “It’s based on technology available on the ISS [International Space Station],” said Bas Landorp in an interview with Universe Today. “So you end up with a completely different Mars mission than Mars One. So their analysis has nothing to do with our mission.” The mission has sparked...

NASA's Opportunity rover, a Mars exploration rover has been active for four years on Mars travelling fro a distance of more than 25 miles, captured images through its microscopic imager camera. A formation of a cross inside a circle was observed in the images. According to a post on UFO Sightings Daily by Scott Waring, the photos, five in number, were captured on July 12 at 10.23 UTC with the photo ID Sol 3720. The source of the photos is the NASA site . Scott Waring explained that the cross inside a circle was unusual and could possibly be three...

It was 20 years ago this past July when images of Jupiter being pummeled by a comet caught the world’s attention. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had flown too close to Jupiter. It was captured by the giant planet’s gravity and torn into a string of beads. One by one the comet fragments impacted Jupiter — leaving blemishes on its atmosphere, each several times larger than Earth in size. Until that event, no one had seen a comet impact a planet. Now, Mars will see a very close passage of the comet Siding Spring on October 19th. When the comet was first...

All over the internet recently, sciFy vs. reality and a Mars satellite for petty cash: That breaks the monopoly. Faced with the spectre of other nations publishing uncensored Mars images, NASA and JPL have started publishing some much more obvious images than they have in the past including a totally uncensored video (JPL) showing large-scale structure. A few items... JPL uncensored video showing large-scale structure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W7-4nSye4lM Raw JPL video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka08deWohpQ Electrical device of some sort with helical coil wound around it Device is on the left, about a third of the way down on the image Gear of some sort....

Explanation: Mars, Antares, Moon, and Saturn are the brightest celestial beacons in this serene sky. The Sun's golden light is still scattered along the southwestern horizon though, captured after sunset on September 28. The evening gathering of wandering planets and Moon along with the bright star viewed as an equal to Mars and the Scorpion's Heart was enjoyed around planet Earth. But from the photographer's perspective looking across the calm waters of Lake Balaton, Hungary, they were joined by a more terrestrial sailboat mast light. Mast light, bright star, planets and Moon are all posing near the plane of the...

Explanation: How did these Martian rocks form? As the robotic Curiosity rover has approached Pahrump Hills on Mars, it has seen an interesting and textured landscape dotted by some unusual rocks. The featured image shows a curiously round rock spanning about two centimeters across. Seemingly a larger version of numerous spherules dubbed blueberries found by the Opportunity rover on Mars in 2004, what caused this roundness remains unknown. Possibilities include frequent tumbling in flowing water, sprayed molten rock in a volcanic eruption, or a concretion mechanism. The inset image, taken a few days later, shows another small but unusually shaped...

It was a surreal moment, listening to the founder and chief designer of SpaceX talk about flying to Mars from Boca Chica beach, but talk about it he did at the Sept. 22 official groundbreaking for the world’s first commercial orbital rocket launch site. From the stage, under a tent set up for the occasion near the actual site where the launch pad will be built, Elon Musk fielded questions from reporters, who couldn’t have been blamed for not quite believing what they were hearing at certain junctures. “I’d like to fly to Mars,” Musk said. “But I think the...