Another Monday is here, which means it’s time to rund own all the news that’s fit to print on this blog. Well, all the news that I found recently in links on this blog. That’s not really “printed.” But you get the point. What’s going on in the wide world of space? Here’s a sampling.
NASA’s latest awesome intra-solar system mission launched earlier this month. The Parker Solar Probe will get closer to the Sun than any previous satellite. It’s set to do some very cool things. We ran a primer on it last month and it successfully lifted off Aug. 11.
Smithsonian Magazine has some fascinating articles on all sorts of topics. Recently, it published two of interest to the space community. The first is about galaxies eating each other. It’s as terrifying as it sounds. The second is about a big ship that hunts meteorites. When we published our Astronaut Friday piece on Serena Aunon-Chancellor, we noted that she had participated in a meteorite hunting expedition in Antarctica. This ship will do something similar, but in the water.
Popular Science had a few good recent articles on space as well. This one discusses all those stories about water on Mars. It’s not as simple as finding it or not, but the science behind the investigations is fascinating. The second is similar; it’s about the search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. We’ve found some great evidence of interesting, complex molecules under its surface oceans. How do we find if life exists there? This article delves into that.
Here’s a nice NASA feature on the things that we need to reach deep space. It’s not as simple as building a bigger and better rocket, but the technology is progressing to where we can envision deep space exploration in the near future.
Finally, our tweet of the day:
Wishing a #happybirthday to astronaut and former @NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden (@cboldenjr)! He’s flown aboard the space shuttle 4 times, including on STS-31 which deployed @NASAHubble in 1990. pic.twitter.com/sJ0yNpsvM0
— NASA History Office (@NASAhistory) August 19, 2018
