The Dragon Approacheth
Here’s SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft approaching the International Space Station earlier today, completing some navigation and communication tests to clear it for its ultimate goal: docking with the ISS.
Welcome to the new era of spaceflight.
(by NASA)
A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.
Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity’s exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.
“If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids,” Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. “They’re just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system.”
Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
12-Mile-High Martian Dust Devil Caught In Act
A Martian dust devil roughly 12 miles high (20 kilometers) was captured whirling its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars on March 14. It was imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its height, the plume is little more than three-quarters of a football field wide (70 yards, or 70 meters).
Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it, the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.
The image was taken during late northern spring, two weeks short of the northern summer solstice, a time when the ground in the northern mid-latitudes is being heated most strongly by the sun.
Skywatcher Photos: Have You Seen Jupiter and Venus Meet Up This Week?
Tonight, March 13, Venus and Jupiter reach conjunction. Over the horizon in the west, they will be a mere 3 degrees apart. Like two distant Tatooine suns that are actually planets and therefore not really like suns at all, almost on top of each other.
Go outside and experience it tonight!
Bonus: EarthSky tells you why Venus is the brightest planet in the night sky.
(↬ Space.com, top image by Shawn Malone, Venus and Jupiter over Lake Superior, Michigan)
Happy Birthday to Valentina Tereshkova! She became the first woman in space on 16 June 1963, aboard Vostok 6.
(Source)
A galaxy not so far away: The Daily Mail put together a wonderful gallery of photographs of Wall Street Canyon at Bryce Canyon National Park by photographer Royce Bair.
For #Starporn Saturday.
We should totally make that a thing.
Simply beautiful!!
