Fifty years after the first man went to space, our space program is in a state of flux. We are closing in on the final missions of the space shuttle era and funding remains in limbo for NASA’s new space capsule and heavy lift rocket. Where will the impetus to invest in exploration come from?
The private sector’s answer is to race to put rich people in space. Just two weeks ago, Richard Branson unveiled Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo that will take anyone willing to pay $200,000 into suborbital space.
Will Branson’s version of space tourism become the norm of space travel and what would be implications to governmental space travel? Space.com looks forward to 2061.
This might be what happens when a star wanders too close to a black hole. Absolutely stunning.
The space explosion was detected on March 28 when an instrument on NASA’s Swift satellite detected an X-ray eruption, the first in a series of powerful blasts. The Swift observatory determined a rough position for the explosion, which scientists are now calling the gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A.
After Swift’s discovery, an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday (April 4) pinpointed the exact source of the blast — the center of a small galaxy in the Draco constellation. That same day, astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a four-hour exposure of the puzzling source.
Although research is ongoing, astronomers say that the unusual explosion likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy’s central black hole. Intense tidal forces probably tore the star apart, and the infalling gas continues to stream toward the black hole.
According to this model, the spinning black hole formed an outflowing jet, which is blasting powerful X-rays and gamma rays in our direction, researchers said.
“The fact that the explosion occurred in the center of a galaxy tells us it is most likely associated with a massive black hole,” said Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement. “This solves a key question about the mysterious event.”
While this awesome, it doesn’t compare with the total lunar eclipse this Monday night. The entire Western Hemisphere will be treated to 72 minutes of the Wrath of God for the United States repealing DADT.
The new Mars rover, Curiosity, is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in 2012 and Space.com has the lowdown on her capabilities. Sounds pretty cool. Doctor Emmett Brown, however, was less than impressed by its choice of power supply….plutonium. His reaction can be seen here.
Things to know about China…Communist government, lung cancer, burgeoning economy, lung cancer, really good food, lung cancer, and dragons. Did I mention lung cancer?
