OrbitalHub

Credits: NASA/CXC/J.Hester (ASU); NASA/ESA/J.Hester & A.Loll (ASU); NASA/JPL-Caltech/R.Gehrz (Univ. Minn.)

Carnival of Space #97 is hosted by Cheap Astronomy.

This week you can read about the Mars Express webcam, HiRISE images of a Martian avalanche, dark energy, high speed solar sails, and much more.

This week, OrbitalHub presents the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). NuSTAR is a high-energy X-ray space telescope that will expand our understanding of the origins and the development of stars and galaxies.

Credits: Orbital

Carnival of Space #96 is hosted by Ian O’Neill at astroENGINE.

Lots of good questions and answers this week. I will borrow a few from Ian… Who was the first woman to travel in space? Can liquid water exist on the surface of Mars? Where are the most energetic particles in the Universe born? You can find the answers at astroENGINE.

This week, OrbitalHub presents the Taurus launch vehicle. Taurus is a four-stage, inertially guided, all solid fuel, ground launched vehicle, designed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. In a typical mission, Taurus can inject a 1,350 kg payload in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Greetings from Toronto! Welcome to the second edition of the Carnival of Space hosted by OrbitalHub.

Credits: Karen Wehrstein

For this edition of the carnival, Centauri Dreams sends Prospects for Red Dwarf ‘Earths’. Paul Gilster analyzes a new paper by Greg Laughlin and Ryan Montgomery that looks at whether Earth-class planets might be found in the habitable zone around red dwarfs. These stars make up over 70 percent of the galactic population, so such a result would mean vast numbers of potentially habitable planets.

At Astroblog, Ian Musgrave presents another chapter from Galileo’s The Starry Messenger. Ian has published a series of posts in honor of the International Year of Astronomy, and the 400th anniversary of Galileo peering through a telescope at the heavens.

The Lounge of the Lab Lemming warns us about a new speculative market in The habitable planet bubble. Read about how certain characteristics of the terrestrial planets determine the price of these planets. The post has an interesting conclusion: ‘Compared to this planetary overvaluation, the housing bubble is imperceptible.’

Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang! presents The Hunt for Planet X: New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto. This is a very detailed book about the Solar System, its history, and the neighborhood around our Sun. Thank Ethan for sharing this with us!

At Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurdsson presents discoveries made by the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope and the implications they have for astrophysics research.

We also have a post from Chandra’s blog. Check out the post for an update on the From Earth to the Universe project.

It seems that Big Bang Needs Your Help. Shortcomings with the Big Bang Theory have led to fixes like inflation and ‘dark energy.’ Other ideas include a cyclic Universe and even a changing speed of light. Read all about it at A Babe in the Universe.

At The Spacewriter’s Ramblings, discover what you can find in the skies if you look deep in A Space Oddity. Read an interesting analysis of an image released by the European Southern Observatory.

Credits: NASA

Philip Plait a.k.a. the Bad Astronomer presents a snapshot of a galactic doom. NGC 6240, which used to be two galaxies, is now in the process of becoming one. The message is clear… stay away from the colliding cores of two merging galaxies.

Paul Scott Anderson, from The Meridiani Journal, tells us that the Opportunity MER has caught its first glimpse of the Endeavour crater. Opportunity is now about twelve kilometers away from the crater. A 3-D image, captured by Opportunity and showing in great detail the small crater Resolution, is up at The Road To Endeavour.

Everybody was so excited about the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery STS-119, especially after many postponements of the mission. The S6 truss segment with the remaining solar arrays made it to the International Space Station. But this was not the highlight! Ian O’Neill from astroENGINE has all the details for you. A bat attached itself to the external tank of the Space Shuttle. The bat also got a name… Brian, and there is a foundation set up in its memory.

There are many speculations about the fate of this unfortunate little guy. My guess is that it got its tongue stuck on the external tank… triple bat dare! What a way to go.

Credits: NASA

Planned for launch in 2013, the James Webb Space Telescope is the next generation space telescope, the successor of Hubble. Nancy Atkinson, writer for Universe Today, has an Q&A with Dr. John Mather on JWST. Dr. Mather is co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).

Down to Earth now…

Bruce Cordell at 21st Century Waves presents Public Attitudes and Prospects for Global Temperature Control.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future gives an update on research done by General Fusion. The goal of the company is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The company claims plants would cost around US$50 million, allowing them to generate electricity at about four cents per kilowatt-hour.

Music of the Spheres reports on Space Expo 2009, an upcoming event that may be of interest to New England space enthusiasts. It will be held at Bradley Airport, Connecticut on March 29.

Ryan Anderson at Martian Chronicles has been blogging about astrogeology. At Martian Chronicles, you can read an interesting post about the geology of the Grand Canyon, among other posts.

From Astropixie, Amanda Bauer describes the tides on the Thames river in London.

Alice at AstroInfo tells us how to get a set of Planets Cards and discusses the challenges faced by someone who is teaching science.

Thanks to everyone who submitted entries to this edition of the Carnival of Space. For more details on the Carnival of Space and past editions, you can check out the Carnival of Space page at Universe Today.

Credits: NASA

Carnival of Space #94 is live at Out of the Cradle. This week, the host is Ken Murphy, the friendly Lunar Librarian at Out of the Cradle. There are many interesting stories at the carnival, so make sure you check them out!

OrbitalHub tells the story of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a high-energy particle detector that will be installed on the International Space Station during the STS-134 mission.

Credits: JAXA

Carnival of Space #93 is hosted by Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society Blog.

You can hear Emily every week on Planetary Radio. The Planetary Society has also launched a new Catalog of Exoplanets on their web site.

This week you can read about the Comet Lulin, nuclear explosions that could be used to launch massive payloads into space, the ethics of Project Paperclip, the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs, Galileo’s first telescopic studies of the Moon, and much more.

OrbitalHub has submitted a post about the Japanese built H-II Transfer Vehicle, one of the future workhorses that will service the International Space Station.

Credits: NASA/JPL

Carnival of Space #92 is hosted at The Launch Pad.

This week covers a diverse range of topics, including OCO, lunar rovers, new generation space suits, the MERs, Chandrayaan, Luna Glob, and much more.

OrbitalHub has submitted a q&a with Les Johnson and Greg Matloff, two of the co-authors of the book Solar Sails: A Novel Approach To Interplanetary Travel.