Ceres' pyramid gets its close-up
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NASA's Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA)
NASA's mission to that other dwarf planet, Ceres, has delivered a fresh bird's-eye view of one of the asteroid's most mysterious features: a cone-shaped, 4-mile-high "pyramid" mountain whose sides are covered with bright material.
The Dawn mission's principal investigator says those shiny sides may be connected to Ceres' other big mystery: the bright spots that shine out from the mini-world's dark surface.
"The bright material on the mountain and in the bright spots are probably the same material," UCLA's Christopher Russell told GeekWire in an email. "How the material got on the sides of the mountain and also in the bottom of the craters is unknown."
Which begs the question: What is that stuff?
Read the full story on GeekWire.
Tags Asteroids, Ceres, Dawn, Dwarf Planets, JPL, NASA, Space
Jeff Bezos will unveil Florida launch plans
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Amazon's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, inspects Blue Origin's launch facility in West Texas before a test flight in April. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is heading to Cape Canaveral next month to make a "significant announcement regarding the emerging commercial launch industry" — most likely about plans for his Blue Origin space venture to build and launch rockets on Florida's Space Coast.
The media invitation went out this week for the Sept. 15 event at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. No further details were provided about the subject of the announcement, but Blue Origin has been working for years to secure a Florida facility.
Bezos' privately financed venture aims to send tourists and researchers to the edge of space in a vertical-launch-and-landing suborbital vehicle called New Shepard. An uncrewed prototype blasted off for its first developmental test flight in April at Blue Origin's West Texas rocket range. The company is also working on an orbital launch system, with the aim of winning NASA contracts to ferry crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Developing that system is expected to be the focus in Florida.
Tags Blue Origin, Cape Canaveral, Commercial Spaceflight, Florida, Jeff Bezos, Space
6 small steps toward cooler spaceships
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An artist's conception shows a Magbeam station emitting a plasma beam to propel a target spacecraft beyond Jupiter. (Credit: UW Advanced Propulsion Lab)
SPOKANE, Wash. — Is there a better way to power a spaceship? The basic tools of the rocket trade have been refined over the course of nearly nine decades, but there's only so far the physics will take us. If we ever want to send anything to another star system, as described in Kim Stanley Robinson's newly published book"Aurora," we'll have to come up with new technologies.
Some of those technologies were laid out at Sasquan, the world science-fiction convention playing out this week in Spokane, during a session on the art and science of spaceships. And it turns out many of those technologies have a Seattle spin. Get a quick rundown on six research areas, with links to the local connections.
Tags Books, Innovation, Interstellar, Sasquan, Science Fiction, Space, Space Elevator, Spaceflight
Will HBO finish 'Game of Thrones' first?
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"Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin sets the scene for a reading at the Sasquan science-fiction convention in Spokane. (Credit: Alan Boyle)
SPOKANE, Wash. — "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin acknowledges that HBO could air the final episode of the show based on his books even before the last book in the series comes out — and he's OK with that.
"Anything is possible," he told GeekWire during Thursday's Q&A at the Sasquan science-fiction convention in Spokane. Martin took questions after reading a chapter from "The Winds of Winter," which will be the sixth book in what's expected to be at least a seven-volume series.
Tags Books, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Sasquan, Science Fiction
Meteor-less in Seattle? Five Perseid places
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Photographer Jeff Berkes captured this picture of a Perseid meteor flashing over Mount Rainier's right flank in 2013 with the Milky Way filling the night sky. (Credit: Jeff Berkes Photography)
The Perseids are traditionally among the most popular meteor showers of the year, and Seattle is traditionally one of the worst places to watch for meteors. Fortunately, the weather and the stars could align for a potentially good show this week — and we have five options that will help you make the most of this summertime skywatching tradition.
Astronauts eat first grown-in-space salad
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Japan's Kimiya Yui (at left) joins NASA's Kjell Lindgren and Scott Kelly in sampling space-grown Outredgeous red romaine lettuce. (Credit: NASA TV)
Astronauts on the International Space Station ate space-grown lettuce for the first time today — an Oregon-bred variety of "Outredgeous" red romaine that's perfectly suited for outer space as well as the Pacific Northwest.
"Nobody is more surprised that Outredgeous went into space than I am," said Frank Morton, the founder of Wild Garden Seed in Philomath, Oregon.
Morton developed the romaine variety back in the 1990s, when he was supplying greens for local restaurants. The leaves are so red that the first buyers found it hard to believe it was actually lettuce. But the taste quickly won over those who tried it, including the spacefliers who snipped off the leaves today and sampled them with a dab of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
"That's awesome," NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren said.
"Tastes good … kinda like arugula," said NASA crewmate Scott Kelly, who is in the midst of a yearlong stint on the space station.
Reserve a satellite launch online? Make it so!
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Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck aims to have the company's Electron rocket blasting off from a New Zealand launch site within a year. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
The CubeSat revolution has come to this: Now you can make an online reservation for a nanosatellite launch almost as easily as booking a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles.
L.A.-based Rocket Lab unveiled its launch booking system today at the annualSmallSat conference in Logan, Utah. "It's really about trying to break down the barriers and make space more accessible," Peter Beck, the company's CEO, explained during a GeekWire interview.
It's one more small step toward turning the satellite business into a turnkey operation for researchers, entrepreneurs, students and Kickstarter-savvy enthusiasts.
Read the full story at GeekWire.
The moon photobombs Earth!
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The moon passes across Earth's disk in a July 16 image captured by the DSCOVR satellite from its observation point, a million miles out in space. The Americas and the Pacific Ocean are visible beneath Earth's cloud cover. Because the moon was moving while DSCOVR acquired the data for this three-filter image, there appears to be a thin green offset on the right side of the moon's disk, and red and blue offsets on the left. (Credit: NASA / NOAA)
The Deep Space Climate Observatory, better known as DSCOVR, is designed to provide full-disk, sunlit views of our home planet from a vantage point a million miles away. But every so often, the moon crosses through the frame. Today, NASA released the first amazing photobomb sequence.
The perspective from DSCOVR's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (a.k.a. EPIC), captured on July 16, provides a topsy-turvy view: Here we're seeing the moon's far side, which earthbound skywatchers can never observe. And although it looks like a full moon, on Earth the moon was in its totally dark, "new" phase.
This isn't the first lunar photobombing: NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft caught the moon crossing Earth's half-lit disk back in 2008. But when DSCOVR goes into full operation next month and starts sending back near-real-time images, we can expect to see a new-moon photobomb roughly twice a year.
Launched in February, DSCOVR is a joint mission of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the twin objectives of making climate observations and keeping watch for incoming solar storms.
The Earth-watching part of the mission follows through on an idea put forward by Vice President Al Gore back in the 1990s – and the former veep was obviously tickled to see the latest pictures released from NASA's lockbox:
.@Nasa just released an incredible video of the moon passing in front of the Earth from #DSCOVR's vantage point https://t.co/pRSjQDUWp8
— Al Gore (@algore) August 5, 2015
A version of this item was published August 5, 2015, on GeekWire. For more from Alan Boyle, check out the Cosmic Log Google+ archive.
Tags DSCOVR, Earth, Images, Moon, Space, Video
Kepler mission finds Earth's older 'cousin'
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This artist's concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun. (NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech Illustration / T. Pyle)
Scientists say NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered Earth's "older, bigger first cousin" – a planet that's about 60 percent bigger than our own, circling a sunlike star in an orbit that could sustain liquid water and perhaps life.
"Today, Earth is a little bit less lonely, because there's a new kid on the block," Kepler data analysis lead Jon Jenkins, a computer scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, said during a NASA teleconference about the find.
Get the full story on Universe Today.
Tags Exoplanets, Kepler, planets, Space
What are Ceres' spots? Reply hazy, ask again later
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Haze has been detected in Ceres' Occator Crater. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA Photo)
The crater that contains those puzzlingly bright spots on Ceres may harbor an equally puzzling haze. Or not. The hints of haze on the dwarf planet, seen in some of the images coming from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, add another intriguing twist to Ceres' mysteries.
The hubbub over haze arose this week during the Exploration Science Forum at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. For months, Dawn's scientists have been observing – and trying to make sense out of – unusually reflective spots within Ceres' craters that show up when the asteroid turns into the sunlight. The team has speculated that they could be frozen pools of water ice, or patches of light-colored, salt-rich material.
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