Up until now, you’ve had to track your free storage on Google products separately. It was just another thing that Google hadn’t brought together to make it easier on users. Today, the company announced that you’ll now have 15GB of free storage to share between Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. Google Apps customers are getting a bump for Drive and Gmail, to the tune of 30GB. → Read More
In late March, the American Geophysical Union announced that the Voyager I space probe became the first man-made object to leave our solar system. Just a few hours later though, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shot down that claim noting that the tell-tale sign of hitting interstellar space (a “change in the direction of the magnetic field”) hasn’t been detected yet.
Still, this whole thing… → Read More
The FCC has introduced a plan to give commercial space companies like SpaceX access to the spectrum they need to perform missions. The plan will allow companies to apply for spectrum on a temporary basis so they can safely operate their missions, as scheduled.
As it stands now, companies like SpaceX (with its Dragon resupply missions to the ISS and Falcon9 rocket launches), and XCOR Aerospace… → Read More
There’s already been plenty of talk about 3D printing entire buildings, but those ambitions may not remain strictly earthbound for too long. According to a new report from Phys.org, the European Space Agency and partners from London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners have begun to explore the feasibility of 3D printing a life-sustaining base on the lunar surface. → Read More
Space exploration and trading MMORPG Vendetta Online kicked off in 2002, and its dedicated, independent four-person indie studio has been diligently updating and improving it on a regular basis. The game is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and Windows 8 hardware, maintaining a persistent game world across each, and now Guild wants to bring it to iPad, too, and is turning to Kickstarter… → Read More
According to a conversation on Twitter between Danny Sullivan and a member of YouTube staff, Google considered sending Felix Baumgartner to space for his jump with a pair of Google Glass. That would have been awesome. → Read More
As I watch today’s jump by Felix Baumgartner – it’s been running non-stop on most major news channels, the same channels that gave a Space Shuttle launch about two minutes between video of a talking dog and what Kim Kardashian just ate – I’m struck by the notion that what we’re seeing, albeit in an Evel Knievel kind of way, is the future of scientific discovery. → Read More
There’s real movement behind the democratization of space. Not in the form of sending more people into space, but in giving more people access to satellites.
Nano-satellites are getting cheap enough now that groups can raise enough money on Kickstarter to buy and launch them. That’s only a slightly interesting development on its own, but what fascinates me is that some of these groups are… → Read More
NBC News reports that astronaut and icon Neil Armstrong passed away earlier today due to complications from a heart-bypass operation he underwent a few weeks ago. He was 82.
Though his merits were many, Armstrong was best known for one thing. On that fateful day back in July 1969, with the eyes of history watching, he clambered down the ladder on the front leg of the Lunar Module “Eagle” to… → Read More
Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos team will have to wait a little longer to leap from the edge of space.
After a successful second test jump from over 96,000 feet last month, Red Bull announced today that Baumgartner’s final jump from 120,000 feet has been pushed back to October. Originally scheduled for this summer, the capsule that carried the famed BASE jumper during his 90-minute… → Read More
Many of us right now are wide-eyed with the latest images from NASA’s Curiosity mission to Mars — so much so that, as Europe wakes up from its live-TV Olympics 100-meter sprint slumber, it looks like that site is occasionally crashing from traffic. Now, another, important idea is just starting to take shape: NASA needs money, big time, to keep doing cool stuff like this.
#fundNASA is picking… → Read More
As I write this, NASA’s Curiosity rover is hurtling through space as it has been for the past eight months, but that all changes tonight. With any luck (scratch that — with a staggering amount of luck), that Mini Cooper-sized envoy will survive its tricky seven minute atmospheric entry, after which it will roam the Martian surface conducting a slew of science experiments for nearly two… → Read More
Having conquered the terrestrial realm, today’s big money is looking to the skies for new regions to subjugate. And what was a lark ten years ago now appears to be a common hobby among a certain ambitious type of mogul not given to the habit of collecting megayachts. Their millions have produced results, however, and while the shuttles have been retiring, the private space ships have been making… → Read More
While giveaways and “follow us and win!” contests aren’t always worth calling out, this promotion from @NASA is too great to pass up. They’re planning on inviting 150 of their followers to watch the Curiosity Mars Rover launch. Yes, the actual launch, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. → Read More
Better lay your millions on the table now and reserve your spot on the ISS now. Russia, NASA, and the rest of the ISS’ partners announced today that they are going to allow the ISS to crash into the atmosphere after it’s decommissioned in 2020. The reason? Space doesn’t need more junk.
The first ISS component launched in 1998 and has slowly grown into a large space station with 15 units. The… → Read More
Yesterday marked a momentous day in U.S. history as NASA launched its final space shuttle, ending a 30-year era. Four astronauts—commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus—are leading the 12-day Atlantis mission, the 135th and final flight of the storied space shuttle program. After Atlantis returns to Earth, NASA will officially retire the… → Read More
Think Arizona’s dust storm was huge? Check out the Great White Spot on Saturn. What first started as a small but bright dot last December, has grown to a massive storm that is currently encompassing a vast part of the planet’s upper half. The Cassini spacecraft first picked it up on December 5, 2010 and then astronomers then noticed the bright dot. Cassini then observed lightning… → Read More
We’ve come to love the fantastic and sublime images of space taken from such satellites as the Hubble, but the truth is that the technology that created those images is incredibly out of date. And while you can’t argue with the results, it has gotten to the point where the sensitivity, angle of view, and data collection rate just need to be moved up to 21st-century standards. The European Space… → Read More
This might be a bit of inside baseball but NASA has added Pluto to its roster of planets, at least indirectly. The Register found an image on NASA’s home page showing the tiny “dwarf planet” wending its merry orbit out at the edge of our solar system, oblivious to its demotion to “big space rock.” → Read More
Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has always been a slightly controversial topic, not because we don’t want it to happen, but because it requires sophisticated and expensive equipment. Can millions really be spent on scanning the heavens when here on earth, there’s a very real shortage of funding for things like education and social services? It’s a loaded question, of course, and a… → Read More
After the retirement of the Shuttle program, NASA will begin flying along with – and funding – multiple “commercial crews” including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin group and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. NASA is paying out $270 million to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada (not the beer) and Boeing. This program, begun in 2009 and is now vitally important as it pairs NASA’s scientists and astronauts with… → Read More
Get ready for a nuclear-powered spacecraft—maybe! The Russian Federal Space Agency says that it will hold talks with Nasa and a number of countries on April 15 to see if they can’t get started on creating a “nuclear engine” by 2012. Such an engine, it’s believed, would only cost around $600m to develop. → Read More
Although the Mars rovers have gone way, way beyond the call of duty (the original mission was for 90 days; Opportunity is still active after more than six years), the dream has to end sometime — and evidence is mounting that for Spirit, the first of the two rovers to touch down, may be down for the count. After a year of being trapped in sand, its last big hope was a big solar boost over… → Read More
One in ten Englishmen and Women believe that one day Brits will routinely vacation on the moon, bringing their Carling beers and jolly demeanors to the verdant plains of that satellites’ firmament by at least 2020. 40% of them believe, also, that there will be a tunnel between the US and the UK. And they say that ecstasy doesn’t damage the brain. → Read More
Iran has just sent a small “Life Capsule” capable of carrying a monkey into space on the Kavoshgar-4 (Explorer-4) rocket, a step forward for the country’s burgeoning space program. The AP is reporting that the capsule flew 75 miles up into orbit and follows launches of communications satellites as well as a capsule containing “a mouse, turtle and worms.” → Read More
Few things are quite as exciting as a good old fashioned feud between distinguished scientists. You’ll recall that a scientist, Nasa’s Richard Hoover, published an article last week in The Journal of Cosmology that claimed to have discovered a form of extraterrestrial bacteria on a meteorite. Life, in other words. But hold on! In the days that have since passed a number of scientists have come out… → Read More
What is the U.S. Air Force doing up there? The mysterious X-37B spacecraft will begin its second voyage on Friday, provided the weather cooperates. It’s not the same exact spacecraft that went up last April, but it’s the same model. The Air Force has classified the activities of the spacecraft, so unless we have another Wikileaks we’ll have no idea what it’s doing up there. → Read More
With the Space Shuttle decommed and pretty much all funding to NASA cut and instead sent to abstinence education, it’s nice to think back on the magical days of yore when a beeping salad bowl could enthrall the world. Sotheby’s is letting us try for a piece of that history thanks to an auction they’re holding of some exciting space gear including this orbiter that once held a… → Read More
Repost: This post got buried after going live yesterday and since it’s more important than silly new Macs, it desevers a bit more time on the front page.
Tomorrow Today will be the last time the space shuttle Discovery launches into orbit. And, we’ve got the places for you to watch it all go down live. → Read More
Where will you be tomorrow morning at 0437 GMT? If you’re a Nasa engineer odds are you’ll be glued to your many monitors, keeping a watchful on your Stardust spaceshipas it approaches the Tempel 1 comet. The Nasa spaceship will be approaching the comet in part in order to take a look at the impact crater created by a previous spaceship’s probe back in 2005. → Read More
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