Late tomorrow evening (AEST), all going well, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A few days after launch the craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space…
Where there's mineral wealth, people always follow.
MGM
As history has repeatedly shown, where there are valuable minerals to be unearthed, adventurous humans will arrive in droves – even if it means battling extreme conditions and risking life and limb.
So…
When we start building structures outside Earth, the raw materials will likely come from asteroids.
Planetary Resources
There will be a future mining boom, as heralded in recent media stories. But this mining will take place in a location even more hostile than the Australian Outback – space.
More specifically, the ore…
Russia is no stranger to ambitious space exploration – and has produced several notable firsts.
Maxim Shipenkov/ EPA
For decades, the Soviet Union was a major player in the exploration of space, famously locking horns with the US in the “Space Race” – a competition for orbital supremacy and solar system exploration throughout…
There's all kinds of rubbish in orbit, and it can cause serious damage.
James Vallejo
In mid-February, the Swiss Space Centre announced a plan to start removing space debris from orbit. Their proposal involved using a satellite, called CleanSpace One, to approach, grapple and then “de-orbit…
Does the US suffer from its desire to go it alone in space?
NASA
In its newly released budget request to Congress, the Obama Administration is seeking to reduce NASA’s funding by US$59m to US$17.7 billion – a reduction of just 0.03%, not that you would know that from…
Nearly 8,000 objects have been identified for possible collision with Earth.
Pat Dalton...
In the past six months, it seems something has fallen from the sky every second minute.
In September, the UARS satellite re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a media frenzy. In October, the German…
New infrastructure is putting the Australian space industry on the map.
RSAA
Space exploration is one of the few science-rich human endeavours that captivates both expert and layperson alike. There is a mystery – a romanticism – associated with space research and technology that…
What's so special about the latest big discovery by NASA's Kepler?
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
On Monday, to much fanfare, astronomers working with the Kepler space observatory (which was launched in March 2009) announced their first discovery of a planet orbiting within the “habitable zone” of…
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
It seems we’re about to come one step closer to putting man (and woman) on Mars. Is this exciting? Of course it is. Nothing fires the imagination quite like the prospect of walking around on a planet other…
China is becoming a superpower in space as well as on earth.
AAP
In the early hours of this morning, the tranquility of the remote Gobi desert was shattered by the sound of a brand new spacecraft hurtling towards the sky.
The rocket, Shenzhou-8 or “Divine Vessel…
Our understanding of the universe has been changed for ever.
A. Caulet (ST-ECF, ESA)/NASA
Occasionally, very occasionally, a discovery comes along that reshapes our view of the universe.
Some discoveries teach us about ourselves; some teach us how to better interact with the world around us;…
Stars are immense, but the space between them is truly phenomenal.
chefranden
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams…
Look on the bright side, earthlings: it'll probably never happen.
Shanon Wise
You might want to look up. Or maybe not.
At some point between now and Saturday, a 6.5 tonne, bus-sized NASA satellite will burst through Earth’s atmosphere, breaking into fiery chunks that could land…
We may finally have an answer to a long-standing cosmic/ cosmetic issue.
NASA
As of today, we have a cataclysmic new explanation for one of solar system astronomy’s most long-standing questions: why do the near- and far-sides of the Moon look so different?
This new theory, published…
Malcolm Walter talks space, science and NASA's future with Dr Greg Chamitoff.
Download the full interview with Dr Chamitoff as a podcast by clicking here.
For the latest in our In Conversation series, Malcolm Walter, Professor of Astrobiology at the University of New South…
Could Stanley Kubrick's classic offer direction for the future of space travel?
slagheap
Tomorrow morning (AEST), weather depending, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will blast off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, marking the end of NASA’s 30-year-old Space Transportation System.
But as the…
Has NASA's 30-year space experiment been worth it?
EPA/NASA TV
All going well, the final Space Shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre early on Saturday morning (AEST). This flight, being made by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be the 135th…
A computer-generated artists impression of the thousands of objects in orbit around Earth.
AFP
By Fred Watson, Australian Astronomical Observatory
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 – the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 – countries around the world have been putting satellites and spacecraft into Earth orbit.
While the majority…
There's something happening, but it's way above your head.
bluedharma/Flickr
Four planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus – will be aligned at dawn tomorrow. What does this mean? Should we be running for the hills?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so. A search on Google or YouTube…
Keeping the space shuttle together is a tremendous feat of engineering.
Stan Honda/AFP
The Space Shuttle Endeavour, one of the most complex machines ever created, is about to take its last trip into space.
But not just yet.
The countdown to Endeavour’s final flight began a few days ago…
It is inevitable that we will one day venture into space beyond the moon not just with robots but in person.
Exploration is part of the human psyche: we are risk-takers with an insatiable curiosity. No…
