The details of this 81 megapixel image of the moon is jaw-dropping — you can see everything.
Best of all, it works incredibly well as an iPhone or iPad wallpaper. The way it lights up the lock screen — especially on the iPhone — is stunning. In effect, it looks like the iPhone progressively lights up the screen, creating a fascinating effect with the lit moon that isn’t replicated the same in other types of images.
Being able to generate power will be essential for long-term space travel. Powering a stay on Mars, for example, will require a lot of fuel, way more than we can pack onto a rocket. That’s why NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy and a number of other groups have been working on a small, transportable nuclear reactor that can reliably generate power on the go. The reactor they’re developing is called Kilopower and earlier this year, they announced that they had conducted successful tests of the system. In March, the team ran the first full-power tests and during a press conference today, they reported that those tests went extremely well.
Lower power Kilopower systems, like the one kilowatt version, can power a basic toaster, while the largest version, a 10 kilowatt model, can do a bit more. Four or five of the latter could be used to power a habitat on Mars and importantly, they don’t rely on the sun, meaning they can be used on planets with less sunlight than ours, in shadowed regions and during light-blocking dust storms. “Kilopower’s compact size and robustness allows us to deliver multiple units on a single lander to the surface that provides tens of kilowatts of power,” NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in January.
It’s certainly not Iron Man’s Arc reactor, but this is still pretty cool!
We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration. We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. – SpaceX Blog
A NASA telescope(Spitzer Space Telescope) has discovered the largest batch of earth-size planets orbiting a single star, and three of them are in the habitable zone. In total there are seven planets, and they all are possible candidates of having liquid water, however the three located in the habitable zone are the most likely.
This discovery is not only fascinating, and incredibly breathtaking, but it also breaks a few records. With this being the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, and the three planets in the habitable zone are also the highest number found around the single star outside of our solar system.
The system, named TRAPPIST-1 after The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, is about 40 light-years from Earth, but this is actually relatively close.
It will now be up to further observations to determine whether they contain liquid water, and also what their atmosphere is made up of.
I’m really excited to see what discoveries can be made in TRAPPIST-1, and maybe one of these will have the necessary ingredients needed for life to exist!
(Image: NASA)