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Japan's space agency says communication has failed with a newly launched, innovative satellite with X-ray telescopes meant to study black holes and other space mysteries. The Japan Times newspaper says a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency official, Saku Tsuneta, said that he didn't know yet if communications could be re-established.

"An embodiment of the present application relates to a method of prospecting asteroids for mining, comprising: (a) launching at least one spacecraft, the spacecraft including a space telescope; (b) examining a plurality of asteroids using the space telescope to gather scientific data for asteroid characterization and cataloguing; and (c) selecting one or more asteroids to mine from the plurality of asteroids examined by the space telescope and stored within the catalogue. Another embodiment of the present application relates to a system for prospecting asteroids for mining, comprising: (a) at least one spacecraft; and (b) a space telescope mounted on the...

Last week, their national nuclear corporation Rosatom announced it isbuilding a nuclear engine that will reach Mars in a month and a half—with fuel to burn for the trip home. Russia might not achieve its goal of launching a prototype by 2025. But that has more to do with the country’s financial situation...than the technical challenges of a nuclear engine. ... “A nuclear contraption should not be too far off, not too complicated,” says Nikolai Sokov, senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, CA. “The really expensive thing will be designing a ship around these...

China Spends Millions Searching for (Space) Aliens by Brian Thomas, M.S. * How much money should a nation spend on space-alien ventures? China is shelling out almost 200 million dollars on an enormous radio antenna built to listen for signs of far out intelligence.1 In the western hemisphere, the US invested millions of dollars in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) project but turned up no evidence whatsoever.2 The ever-growing number of barren and gaseous exoplanets discovered continues to elevate Earth's uniqueness.3 Apparently, China would love to be the first nation to make "first contact." China recently made news...

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: R. Sahai and J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a final act of celestial beauty before the long fade into cosmic history. Invisibly buried in the centre of this colourful swirl of gas is a dying star, roughly the same mass as the sun. As a star ages, the nuclear reactions that keep it shining begin to falter. This uncertain energy generation causes the stars to pulsate in an irregular way, casting off its outer layers into space. As the star sheds these outer gases, the super-hot core...

Rare Jewel: Earth-like Planets May Be Very Rare Msgr. Charles Pope • February 28, 2016 • I have written a good bit over the years about what is known as the “Rare Earth” Hypothesis. A recent blog on discovermagazine.com ponders how high the odds are against the existence of another Earth-like planet. More on that in a moment. But first let’s review some of the basics of the Rare Earth Hypothesis.While most people, including most scientists, believe that there may be billions of inhabitable planets out there a capable of sustaining complex life, the Rare Earth Hypothesis suggests that...

This image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 (arrowed) in front of hundreds of background galaxies. Well-hidden from human eyes, there is a gigantic supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. (Credit: NASA & ESA) ===================================================================================================================================== Astronomers have found one of the largest-ever black holes in giant galaxy NGC 4889, some 300 million light years away. The Hubble space telescope has captured an incredible image of elliptical galaxy NGC 4889, which is located in the Coma Cluster. Scientists, however, note that the giant galaxy harbors a dark secret. The European Space Agency...

Asteroid TX68 is coming! OK, it's probably gonna miss... but maybe not! Asteroid TX68, from it's name 2013 TX68 was discovered in 2013. It is supposed to approach closer than anything else recently, at .044 times the Lunar distance, or about 11,000 miles. Not sure why they use LD as a measurement because LD changes all the time, but so it goes... Comments or thoughts are always appreciated!

In one of his final interviews from the International Space Station, astronaut Scott Kelly said that the Earth's atmosphere "looks very, very fragile" and "like something that we need to take care of."

SEOUL/TOKYO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday carrying what it has called a satellite, but its neighbours and Washington denounced the launch as a missile test, conducted in defiance of U.N. sanctions and just weeks after a nuclear bomb test. The U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected a missile entering space, and South Korea's military said the rocket had put an object into orbit. North Korea said the launch of its satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, named after late leader Kim Jong Il, was a "complete success" and that it was making a polar orbit of...

The nitrogen ice glaciers on Pluto appear to carry an intriguing cargo: numerous, isolated hills that may be fragments of water ice from Pluto's surrounding uplands. These hills individually measure one to several miles or kilometers across, according to images and data from NASA's New Horizons mission. The hills, which are in the vast ice plain informally named Sputnik Planum within Pluto's 'heart,' are likely miniature versions of the larger, jumbled mountains on Sputnik Planum's western border. They are yet another example of Pluto's fascinating and abundant geological activity. Because water ice is less dense than nitrogen-dominated ice, scientists believe...

Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA’s Journey to Mars lacks a plan to achieve the first human landing on the Red Planet almost six years after President Obama announced the goal on April 15, 2010. Moreover, two of the three witnesses argued that a more realistic near term goal for the space agency would be a return to the moon. The moon is not only a scientifically interesting and potentially commercially profitable place to go but access to lunar water, which can be refined into rocket fuel, would make the Journey...

Full US space launch capability may be delayed beyond 2019 if it cuts its supply of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines, US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. "Industry tells us... [they can] make 2019 for an engine, but I must say an engine alone will not get us to space. It needs to be integrated with a rocket, it needs to be tested, it needs to be certified, and to get all of that done, to have a launch capability will be longer than 2019," James said. The United States currently relies...

Study: Maybe we can’t find aliens because they’ve all died already By Rachel Feltman January 22 at 12:27 PM he hunt for extraterrestrial life is one of humanity's most exciting endeavors. The pieces are all falling into place: We're finding more and more planets outside of our own solar system, and soon the James Webb Telescope will give us unprecedented looks at these distant worlds. We've populated Mars with robots looking for signs of ancient habitability. Orbiters dive through the icy geysers of ocean-covered moons in hopes of catching some life-giving minerals. Our radio telescopes are tuned in to mysterious...

NASA has selected SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada Corp. to fly cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2019, the agency announced today (Jan 14). Between 2019 and 2024, NASA will purchase a minimum of six uncrewed cargo missions from each of the three companies, agency officials said in a media briefing today. The space agency has the option to purchase additional re-supply missions from any of the three providers, and will likely do so, said Kirk Shireman, program manager for the ISS. SpaceX and Orbital ATK were selected as cargo providers in NASA's first round of...

Call Mulder and Scully, Hillary has a job opening The United States is facing a lot of problems these days. We’ve got Islamic terrorism, mass shootings, hundreds of thousands of illegals flooding across our southern border, and an out-of-control federal government drowning in debt. We also, apparently, have concerns about aliens. No, we’re not talking about families wandering in from Tijuana, we’re talking about little green men who come to Earth to slaughter our cattle and probe us in our sleep. Don’t worry, though. Hillary Clinton is aware of your concerns and - if elected president - she’s going to...

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a "new" galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure. As the merging...

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. Practically all the projects related to manned flights to the moon are absent from an updated version of the Federal Space Programme for the years 2016 through 2025 drafted by the Federal Space Agency after the downwards revision of its budget, Izvestia daily said on Tuesday referring to the document it had obtained. "As it follows from the text of the draft programme, which Roscosmos has submitted to the government for review, a decision was taken to sacrifice the lunar programme that was named a strategic goal for future development of Russian space research," the newspaper...

London (dpa) - British astronaut Tim Peake has apologized for dialling the wrong number from space. "I'd like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying 'Hello, is this planet Earth?' - not a prank call ... just a wrong number!" Peake posted on Twitter. Peake, 43, a former helicopter pilot, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on December 15. He was accompanied by American Tim Kopra, 52, and Russian Yury Malenchenko, 53. On Friday, the ISS passes over the Spanish-French border soon after sunset in England, Peake wrote on his blog. And stargazers are in...

Black holes earn their name because their gravity is so strong not even light can escape from them. Oddly, though, physicists have come up with a bit of theoretical sleight of hand to retrieve a speck of information that's been dropped into a black hole. The calculation touches on one of the biggest mysteries in physics: how all of the information trapped in a black hole leaks out as the black hole "evaporates." Many theorists think that must happen, but they don't know how. Unfortunately for them, the new scheme may do more to underscore the difficulty of the larger...