Carnival of Space #492 and #493
Woah! Two Carnivals of Space in one? Sadly, last week’s host was unable to publish the 492nd carnival, so rather than let all that good spacey goodness go to waste, the organisers and I decided to double up this week’s edition instead. So make sure you’re comfortable before diving in.
But before that, a quick announcement. We’ve been threatening to launch a podcast here at Urban Astronomer for many years now, and it’s finally happening. We’ve already released a teaser episode, and are hard at work recording interviews and scripting interesting segments for your listening pleasure. We’ll be officially launching in the second half of February, but we’ll be publishing individual podcast episodes right here on this website as we finish producing them. That way, regular readers get to preview them before the broader podcast community – that’s just our way of saying thanks for supporting us over the past seven years.
So with that out of the way, let’s get to the carnival:
The Spacewriter’s Ramblings
- TheSpacewriter talks about how HST and Voyager spacecraft are probing nearby clouds of gas and dust.
Universe Today
- Last Man on the Moon, Gene Cernan, Has Died
- Mars Curiosity Rolls Up to Potential New Meteorite
- SpaceX Falcon 9 Comes Roaring Back to Life with Dramatically Successful Iridium Fleet Launch and Ocean Ship Landing
- The Incredible Story of How the Huygens Mission to Titan Succeeded When It Could Have Failed
Planetaria
Blasting News
- Moon Express has raised the money for private lunar expedition
- Moon Express will shoot for the moon on a rocket with a 3D printed engine
- Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space, boasts that Russia will be the first on Mars
- Why mining asteroids and the moon will not destroy the world’s economy
- Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Gene Cernan Twitter lament causes social media firestorm
Chandra X-ray Observatory
Next Big Future
- Giant soap bubble on earth shows is a reminder that soap bubbles in space could easily make massive (like Death Star size) structures
- A closer examination of near term construction of Death Star like structures.
- NASA sending a robot explorer mission to the largest mostly metal asteroid. The asteroid has metal with values of about $10,000 quadrillion based on current prices
- Spacex major profit opportunity is the global satellite high speed internet system
- Spacex has a successful return to launch and lands another booster
And there you have it! A jumbo family fun sized Carnival of Space! If you liked that, and would like to read more, then head over to Next Big Future this time next week for the next installment. Till then, clear skies and keep looking up!