Author Archives: Allen Versfeld

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five growing kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He has formerly served as Director of the Astrophotography and Citizen Science sections of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. You can find his personal social media feed on Mastodon!

Virgin Galactic launches VSS Enterprise

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Private aerospace company Virgin Galactic, which hopes to offer commercial space-flight services from 2012 onwards, completed the first test flight of Spaceship 2 (also known as Virgin Space Ship Enterprise) yesterday. The Enterprise was flown in a Captive Carry flight from Mojave Air and Space-port, in which the spaceship remained attached to the Mothership (WhiteKnight 2). When testing is completed, Virgin Galactic will offer suborbital flights to passengers on board the Enterprise.  The journey starts with Enterprise suspended from the … Continue reading →

Life under Antarctica

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Life under the ice A NASA team in Antarctica, drilling down through ancient ice sheets, have found complex living creatures where they expected to find no life at all.  This discovery reopens the possibility of finding life in the oceans under the ice surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s four large moons. The scientists were working on Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, some twenty kilometres from the sea.  Having drilled an eight centimetre wide hole almost two hundred meters down … Continue reading →

Soviet Moon Rover found by LRO

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In 1973, the Soviet Union despatched the Lunokhod-2 rover to the moon.  It was a Solar/Nuclear powered robotic rover which explored the surface of the moon and took a number of scientific readings.  It was primarily powered by fold-out solar panels, and was kept from freezing during the 14 day long Lunar Night by a Polonium-210 radioisotope heater.  Having travelled thirty seven kilometres, it was finally bogged down when it’s earth-bound controllers accidentally drove it into a small crater, which … Continue reading →

Mars Science Laboratory

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NASA’s newest mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be nuclear powered, the size of a small truck, and designed specifically to find life on Mars.  It will also be armed with a powerful laser, to blast interesting rocks and see what’s inside them.  “Curiosity”, as it is unofficially named, was originally scheduled for launch last year, before rigorous testing uncovered possible flaws in the design of the actuators which drive the wheels and its robotic arm.  Now, however, … Continue reading →

Galileo a bad scientist?

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This article in Scientific American suggests that, although Galileo Galilei quite famously had a more accurate understanding of the Solar System than was generally accepted at the time, he reached these conclusions in spite of his observations and not because of them.  He simply chose the theory that he preferred instead of the one that evidence supported.  In other words, he was a bad and dishonest scientist who turned out to be correct only by sheer luck! The argument is … Continue reading →