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A void left in the wake of a particularly powerful gust of solar wind caused the atmosphere of Mars to dramatically balloon outwards...As the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars recorded a sudden, sharp drop in solar particles when the wind passed on 26 December 2022, it simultaneously recorded a bizarre and startling change in the Martian atmosphere...The last time we saw this phenomenon was in 1999, when a sudden drop in the solar wind caused Earth's magnetosphere to swell outwards, increasing its volume 100-fold.

Senior Pentagon officials relayed this to reporters Friday in a briefing to highlight the broad review headed by the new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) working with other federal agencies to review unidentified aerial phenomena incidents. Unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP's is the new term for UAP's and has itself gone a name change as it is no longer limited to aerial phenomena. UFO enthusiasts have been waiting since Oct. 31 for a long delayed first annual update by the Director of National Intelligence to their 2020 report that could explain only one of the 144 incidents it reviewed. Moultrie...

Technology capable of collecting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth to provide a global supply of clean and affordable energy was once considered science fiction. Now it is moving closer to reality. Through the Space-based Solar Power Project (SSPP), a team of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers is working to deploy a constellation of modular spacecraft that collect sunlight, transform it into electricity, then wirelessly transmit that electricity wherever it is needed. They could even send it to places that currently have no access to reliable power. “This is an extraordinary and unprecedented project,” says Harry...

Europe needs a bolder space policy, French President Emmanuel Macron declared Wednesday, warning that Europe’s sovereignty is at stake if it falls behind rival powers in a key field for technology, science and military competitiveness. Speaking at a meeting in Toulouse, France, Macron said recent events had shown how crucial it is to be able to monitor troop movements from orbit — a reference to satellite images showing Russia’s mass military deployment near Ukraine that raise fears of an imminent invasion. “There is no full power or autonomy without managing space,” Macron said. “Without (it) you can’t conquer new frontiers...

WEST TEXAS—Outer space has returned an unwanted Amazon package that was sent to it unsolicited yesterday. According to witnesses, the package floated gently back down to earth after being rejected. Locals have asked Amazon to please "pick this thing up and bring it back to the warehouse" as no one really wants it around or knows what to do with it. If you know who ordered a giant metal gumdrop with 4 dudes in it, please call Amazon immediately.

By harnessing the innovation unleashed by the free enterprise system, private space enterprise is ready to explore the next untapped horizon: asteroids. We’re going to the moon. We’re going to Mars. And, before you know it, we’ll be going to the asteroid belt.Space is back, baby. It’s back in the news, back in our thoughts, and back in the culture. America, and the world, are better for it.Over the past few years, space exploration has returned to public consciousness in ways not since the first shuttle mission in 1981, or even since Americans landed men on the moon then brought...

Amid the pandemic, the SpaceX launch should inspire us to be risk-takers, trying new things and starting new ventures. We can only achieve great things if we don't let fear dictate how we live our lives. Two American astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, will strap themselves in the Dragon capsule, which sits on top of the Falcon 9 rocket — both built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX — and depart for the International Space Station on May 27.This extraordinary event embodies much historic significance. The Falcon 9 rocket will be launched from the same launch pad at the Kennedy...

Government agencies may not have a monopoly on life-hunting space missions for much longer. Breakthrough Initiatives, which already scans the heavens for possible signals from faraway alien civilizations, is considering looking for E.T. on worlds close to home, founder Yuri Milner said. "We are thinking very seriously about solar system-based initiatives," Milner said here Sunday (Nov. 4) at the seventh annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony at NASA's Ames Research Center. "We're thinking, within our foundation, is there something we can do, privately funded, which will supplement the government-funded projects?" A potential Breakthrough mission to a destination in our own solar system...

KT Boundary and Iridium Ever dreamt of hiking over the landscape and finding a mineral vein rich with ores, perhaps even silver or gold glittering in the sunshine, like in the Hand of Faith vein in Australia? How about joining the gold rush fever—without trekking up the Chilkoot Pass as thousands of prospectors did well over 100 years ago? The chances of finding a “mother lode” are slim, even when trying hard. They are similar to winning the jackpot in a big lottery. But don’t give up just yet; there is a new “horizon” for your exploration activity—the new frontiers...

Every now and then a word just catches your ear, and several times in a day it jumps out at you and you’re tempted to say: “There it is again!”Yesterday it was the word “consider”, an ordinary, daily word. Or is it? Why did it strike me so? With my knowledge of Latin, it occurred to me that “consider” has something to do with the stars, for the Latin word sidera means “stars” or “heavenly bodies.” How interesting, I have use the word for the better part of 50 years and that had never crossed my mind. But as sometimes...

The video below is a very creative representation of what the day and night sky on Earth would look like if the earth had rings like Saturn. It is well worth a view.But it puts me in the mind of pondering the delicate balance of life on this earth and, though the artwork in the video is beautiful, I suspect that the presence of rings would dramatically alter life on this earth, perhaps even annihilate it.By way of disclaimer, let me say I am not a geologist or astronomer. But a number of things concern me about the presence of...

Researchers have shown that ancient Egyptian iron beads held at the UCL Petrie Museum were hammered from pieces of meteorites rather than iron ore The objects. which trace their origins to outer space also predate the emergence of iron smelting by two millennia. Carefully hammered into thin sheets before being rolled into tubes, the nine beads — which are over 5000 years-old - were originally strung into a necklace together with other exotic minerals such as gold and gemstones. revealing the high value of this exotic material in ancient times The study is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science_...

Astrobotic Technology's Red Rover, a lunar exploration vehicle that the company claims will be able to scout and drill for precious resources at the moon's poles. Moon, we just can’t quit you. NASA has shifted its goals from returning to the moon to visiting an asteroid or even Mars, but not everyone has given up on going back. The space agency's attention deficit has sparked a race among private companies eager to return to Earth's satellite.Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/27/race-to-mine-moon-heats-up/#ixzz1c2sHUuBP

Earth has been told to brace for a possible satellite collision as an orbiting telescope weighing nearly three tons has spun out of control and is plummeting homewards. ROSAT, a German X-ray telescope built with British and American technology, has been orbiting the Earth since 1990 and has provided invaluable data on stars. But they lost contact with it in 1999. It is now predicted to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at the end of this month.

The soundtrack to the 1979 Disney space epic has been remastered, expanded, and now available from Disney and Intrada records. The music was composed by the late English movie music master John Barry, who is widely known for his work on the James Bond films between 1963 and 1987. Here is a suite of the OST on youtube

The term Nanobacteria is short for its scientific genus & species name Nanobacterium sanguineum, a Latin scientific term that means blood nanobacteria. Nanobacteria are nano-sized in that they are from 20-200 nanometers in size and are the smallest known self-replicating bacteria (a nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter and is approximately the width of ten hydrogen atoms side-to-side) Nanobacterium sanguineum is recognized as an emerging infectious disease. Nanobacteria have been shown to cause the calcification in coronary artery disease and vascular disease atherosclerotic plaque. (Miller V, et al, Mayo Clinic, Journal American College of Cardiology, March 2002 & Submitted...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn have detected for the first time a molecule closely related to an amino acid: amino acetonitrile. The organic molecule was found with a 30 metre radio telescope in Spain and two radio interferometers in France and Australia in the "Large Molecule Heimat", a giant gas cloud near the galactic centre in the constellation Sagittarius (Astronomy & Astrophysics, in press).  Amino acetonitrile. (Credit: Sven Thorwirth, MPIfR) The "Large Molecule Heimat" is a very dense, hot gas clump within the star forming region Sagittarius B2....

The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday. Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004. Samples of gas and dust collected on a small dish lined with a super-fluffy material called aerogel were returned to Earth...