Extrasolar planets or for short exoplanets have been found in orbit around many different star systems other than ours. Exoplanets are being found all the time but take a look at this database of exoplanets for an idea on their characteristics. An actual image has been shot sometime back of an exoplanet but as you [...]

These lectures are always good. Take a trip round blackholes. //

This is a good lecture on why there’s a 1 in 4 chance of life (in Penelope’ Bostons opinion anyway) under the surface on Mars. //

Europa is a fascinating place. Once it was believed that Jupiter’s moons were just lumps of ice and rock. But missions to Jupiter showed us that there is more to Jupiter’s moons than we thought. This moon has become much more interesting the more it is explored. The furthest we have got nowadays is to [...]

Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in harsh environments where you would think nothing could live. When looking at extremophiles on Earth and the environments they live in it does make you wonder why organisms haven’t been found on other planets yet. Extremophiles may have been the first life that existed on Earth. They don’t exist, [...]

Lots of signals have gone into space such as TV, radar and radio. The signals have been betraying our presence for 60 years and have passed over about 6000 star systems and are reaching new systems every day. This would seem to be enough, even though we haven’t received anything back yet, but what if [...]

The first mission to Mars that was to make a successful landing consisted of Viking 1 and Viking 2. It was an exciting mission with the orbiter picking landing spots for the lander to make a landing. Both spacecraft launched in 1975. They both made a successful landing and have lasted for about six years [...]

Kepler is a mission to study 156,000 stars using the Kepler telescope up there in space. 706 target data has been released in a report but 400 have not. The exoplanets found have sizes from as small as Earth to as large as Jupiter. They have also found five multi planet systems which sound quite [...]

I wrote an article on the formation of the solar system and other planetary systems throughout the galaxy a few weeks ago. New information is coming to light all the time and this is a field that has a lot of discoveries left to find. The new discoveries were published in the astrophysical Journal. Astronomers [...]

Ever wondered what happened after a space shuttle landing? NASA have released a video (below) which shows the winding down of the shuttle and the tow back to its hangar. After landing it takes 150 workers to pull the crew out and to carry out the necessary checks and procedures. Shuttle Atlantis will be ready [...]

Falcon 9 built by SpaceX reached orbit on Friday. This commercial venture is hoped by NASA to replace the government rockets that are presently taking satellites etc into orbit. Commercialisation of space was put forward as a major aim by the United States when president Obama came into power. This is one of those small [...]

The Cassini spacecraft has noticed on Titan, Saturn’s moon, that hydrogen molecules flow down through the atmosphere and disappear when they reach the surface (Icarus Journal). Also the hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan have been mapped and show that there is a lack of acetylne (Journal of geophysical research). The lack of acetylne could [...]

The longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight took place on may 26. The engine is a scramjet engine that broke the time spent over mach 5 by the previous flight. It was only over mach 5 for 200secs but at mach 5 that’s quite a distance. //

The world’s energy needs are coming to a crisis point but technology could solve this in a Japanese plan to put solar cells around the moon’s equator. That’s 11,000 km of solar cells twinkling on the moon. The electricity from the solar cells would be converted to microwaves and lasers would beam the power to [...]