space stories

Post-election rumor: next NASA mission will be beyond moon

Evan Ackerman
Thursday, November 8, 2012 - 4:16pm
 
We've known since February that the leading candidate for NASA's next major manned mission is a station located at the L2 Earth-Moon Lagrange Point out beyond the far side of the moon. The latest rumors suggest that this mission was probably approved by the Obama administration, and now that he's been reelected, it has a good chance of actually happening.

Paintball blasts proposed to save Earth from asteroids

Eileen Marable
Saturday, October 27, 2012 - 3:14pm
 
It's one of those nagging problems science has yet to solve: how do we save Earth if one of our asteroid neighbors starts heading our way? We've noodled everything from tractor beam, lasers, and even nuking them Armageddon style. A new proposal joining the chorus suggests hitting asteroids with white paintballs could do the trick — first by steering them off course with the force of impact, then by using the force of reflected sunlight bouncing off the paint to slowly move the offender out of the way.

Telescope sees past clouds of gas and into depths of Uranus

Evan Ackerman
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - 2:26pm
 
Uranus is surrounded by methane gas. This presents a problem for those of us who are interested in looking at it, since all that gas makes it hard to see what's really going on. Voyager and Hubble have the same problem, but new long-wavelength observations from the Keck II telescope in Hawaii have looked past the gas to examine Uranus in unprecedented detail.

Earth-sized planet found orbiting Alpha Centauri

Evan Ackerman
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 6:50am
 
Well, this is pretty damn exciting: astronomers have confirmed the detection of a planet just 1.13 times the size of Earth orbiting around Alpha Centauri B, which is part of the closest star system to Earth. At just 4.3 light-years away, it's potentially reachable in just a few decades with near-term technology, and now we've got a place to land. Er, sort of.

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