Deep Space Industries plans to send tiny robotic ships to explore and eventually mine asteroids, and they expect to launch the first ones by 2015.
While they’ll have no room for crew, much less a licensed companion, the tiny craft have been designated “FireFly” probes. Habitable colonies form part of the long-range plan.
In other space news, a petition encourages the use of Space Race technology that was previously considered, but not used, to go to Mars.
Video below:
The White House has issued an official response to the petition to construct a Death Star, and it’s very well done. Check out This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For.
…though whether that means, “there’s an actual hairy hominid hiding in the bushes that’s half-human” or “researchers who believe the Sasquatch and similar beasts exist have been testing samples of something that’s been contaminated with human DNA” is another matter.
LiveScience handles the story with some skepticism here, while The Huffington Post covers the story here.
Non-blurry Video below:
This groundbreaking launch, the second of a SpaceX Dragon capsule and the first on a NASA-related mission, takes a small step, and a giant leap, for privatized spaceflight.
The annual Ig Nobel prizes have been awarded, and longtime reader Chad has compiled a summary of the results on his own site.
Longtime reader Chad points us to this Arstechnica article about a recent result confirming one of the axioms of quantum mechanics: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is not simply about measurement, but is indeed a fundamental property of the Universe. Better tools will not make it go away. While physicists have believed this for years, they haven’t always communicated it effectively, nor have they had verified documented proof such as this.
If nothing mars its progress, the most advanced Mars mission to date will land August 6. We have several relevant links below.
UPDATE: Success! A couple weeks of checks will precede anything really interesting.
No, this isn’t a video by me. Chad Cloman passed along a very nice video where Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson of CERN explain, for those who don’t know, what the Higgs Boson does, and how it affects our view of the universe.
CERN’s latest press release confirms the suspicions from last year’s result: neutrinos travel slower than light, and last year’s results were a result of a systematic error which has since been found and corrected.
Unless you live to see 2117, your chance to see a solar transit of Venus happens in the next twenty-four hours.