Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

September 12, 2016

Vigil for Tiangong 2
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Sep 11, 2016
September 15 marks the opening of the launch window for China's Tiangong 2 space laboratory. It will also probably be the actual launch date. The launch window extends to September 20, but China has no good reason to delay the launch of Tiangong any later than necessary. There seem to be no technical reasons that would prevent it from launching at the first chance. We have been given sparse information in the lead-up to the launch, but what little we know sounds very positive. We can also infer th ... read more

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Mars Rover Views Spectacular Layered Rock Formations The layered geologic past of Mars is revealed in stunning detail in new color images returned by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, which is currently exploring the "Murray Buttes" region of lower Mount S ... more		Third European Rover Challenge Kicks Off in Poland A small town of Jasionka, near Rzeszow, Poland will serve as a battleground of red-brown sand and dust for Mars rovers trying to complete numerous complex tasks. The event, known as the European Rov ... more		Opportunity departs Marathon Valley to head deeper into Endeavour Crater Opportunity has officially left Marathon Valley. On Sol 4482 (Sept. 1, 2016), we approached the 'Lewis and Clark Gap' and with the successful drive on Sol 4484 (Sept. 3, 2016) we passed throug ... more
				NASA launches first asteroid dust-retrieval mission The US space agency Thursday launched its first mission to collect dust from an asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago. ... more		Small asteroid flew safely past earth this week A small asteroid designated 2016 RB1 safely flew past Earth this week at a distance of about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers, or just less than 1/10th the distance of Earth to the moon). Becau ... more

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Asteroid Mission Will Carry Student X-Ray Experiment At 7:05pm (EDT), Thursday, Sept. 8, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. Among that spacecraft's five instruments is a student experiment that will use X-rays to h ... more		NASA Searches for Big Idea from Students for In-Space Assembly of Spacecraft In the 2017 Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, NASA is engaging university-level students in its quest to reduce the cost of deep space exploration. NASA's Game Changi ... more		Sidekick autonomy software guides YFQ-42A test mission for CCA program Infleqtion lists shares on NYSE as neutral atom quantum firm Top Chinese gaming companies continue to challenge		A first for direct-drive fusion Scientists at the University of Rochester have taken a significant step forward in laser fusion research. Experiments using the OMEGA laser at the University's Laboratory of Laser Energetics (LLE) h ... more
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2nd Integrated Air and Missile Defense - Securing the Complex Air Domain: Requirements for Sustainable, Global, and Reliable Solutions to Next Generation Air & Missile Threats - 28-30 September, 2016 | Washington D.C.

Tiangong 2 is coming soon, real soon China's Tiangong 2 space laboratory will launch soon. At the time of writing, there is no official word on a launch date, but the launch is expected well before the end of September. There has been ... more		OSIRIS-REx Prepared for Mapping, Sampling Mission to Asteroid Bennu The first U.S. mission to travel to an asteroid, retrieve samples and return them to Earth is targeted for a Sept. 8 launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force ... more		Solar-driven ionosphere charges may nudge stressed faults toward rupture Stable black carbon in mangrove soils boosts coastal climate role Low crystallinity iron minerals show promise for chromium cleanup and carbon storage		Scientists discover what extraordinary compounds may be hidden inside Jupiter and Neptune Using computer modeling, chemists from MIPT and Skoltech (the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology) have found out which molecules may be present in the interiors of Uranus, Neptune, and the ... more
China's second space lab Tiangong-2 to be launched China's second space lab Tiangong-2 is scheduled to be put into space between September 15 and 20, according to the office of China's manned space program. The space lab was transferred with i ... more		Kuang-Chi near space test flight set for 2016 Kuang-Chi Group, a Shenzhen-based technology conglomerate, has announced that Traveler II Beta will carry animals into near space during a test flight this year. The announcement came during the ope ... more		Proxima b Could Be a Life-Friendly Planet, Says One of the Co-Discoverers When in late August this year, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) broke the news, announcing the discovery of Proxima b, the closest exoplanet to us, it fueled hopes of finding an Earth-like pl ... more		Scientists attempt to teach robots human values A pair of artificial intelligence experts from Cornell University have joined a nationwide effort to ensure the nightmare science fiction scenarios - the ones involving corrupted human-killing computers - don't become a reality. ... more

	Stanford-hosted study examines how AI might affect urban life in 2030 A panel of academic and industrial thinkers has looked ahead to 2030 to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect life in a typical North American city - in areas as diverse ... more		NASA set to launch near-Earth asteroid mission US space agency NASA is poised Thursday to launch its groundbreaking first mission to a near-Earth asteroid to collect samples that could shed light on the dawn of the solar system. ... more

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