Skip to main content

It looks like SpaceX is gearing up to colonize Mars, with the first flight targeted for 2018 (the next time the Red Planet is close enough to give us an orbital shot at getting there quickly). That will just be the first unmanned test flight and attempted non-exploding landing, if they can even make that incredibly close deadline, but damn, I am excited! My favorite article about it so far is the one put together by Space Flight Now, who always do a great job of analyzing all the pros and cons of a proposed space mission. The Dragon 2 spacecraft could possibly deliver 4 tons of supplies to mars per launch (you wouldn’t want to use that craft for the actual mission, since the crew capsule is the size of an SUV), building up to enough food, water, and equipment to make the project viable. No word on when the first humans would head that way quite yet, but I expect them to make some comments once we see how the initial mission goes.

If you aren’t an Astronaut, you probably haven’t seen the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis from Space. But luckily there are some serious camera fanatics in orbit these days, here is a glimpse of what they have been up to where the Auroras are concerned. If you pay attention, you will also get to see some far ranging lightning strikes from a gods-eye view, so you can take in how a single strike can hit 50 places across a continent at once. Also, here is the link for the full 4K version at YouTube, or you can go directly to NASA for the best possible quality. Visit the NASA TV Gateway to check what is coming up on each of their channels and link directly in. You need at least 13MBps down to watch 4K TV online even if nothing else is trying to use the internet from your house, but most broadband services these days give you 10 times that or better, on the theory that your whole family will be trying to do things at that resolution at the same time.

Using solar sails with a laser driven power system to launch from orbit, and traveling at 20% of the speed of light, tiny little Starships will visit Alpha Centauri. There will be a swarm of postage stamp sized nanocraft sent to our nearest neighbor to look for signs of life and give us more detailed information about the resources available there. If you are asking When will this happen?, they are working on it now, with the goal of launching within a decade or two. The folks involved in Breakthrough Starshot include Steven Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Yuri Milner, Ann Druyan, and a host of others.

The 1975 documentary film by Orson Wells on Aliens and Extraterrestrial Civilizations called Who’s Out There? was apparently authorized by NASA. Even if it wasn’t, it really is a treat to watch, and it held the title of another Hugo Award winning story that was later turned into the movie The Thing. If you have the chance to watch it some time it is an interesting video.

NASA assembled this amazing video of the Sun in Ultra-HD (4K) from footage generated by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, and added some tasty music by Lars Leonhard to it. On top of that, the folks at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center decided to make this video public domain, posting it so it can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12034, along with several others. If they keep doing this, I might have to break down and buy myself a TV suitable for watching these on, and download the entire collection.