Lifeboat Foundation

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which began science operations in July, has released its first full frame image using all four of its cameras.

A devastating solar storm which could wipe out communications on Earth and fry power grids is a matter of ‘when not if’ the head of the Met Office’s Space Weather Monitoring centre has warned.

Extreme space weather has already caused widespread disruption, with a geomagnetic storm leaving six million people without power in 1989 while Apollo astronauts narrowly missed being exposed to deadly radiation in 1972 and solar flares in 2003 forced the crew of the International Space Station to take cover.

The largest solar storm ever recorded, The Carrington Event in 1859, knocked out Telegraph systems and even set fire to paper in offices.

Continue reading “Devastating solar storm is a matter of ‘when not if’ warns Met Office as Solar Orbiter begins testing” »

🔥 😲 Jupiter and Io… Credit — NASA, Voyager mission.

Mike Dunn talked about the use of lava tubes for the Moon and Mars habitats. Mike has worked on The Mars Lava Tube Pressurization Project’s (MLTPP).

A recent contest challenged participants to create utopian designs of future human Mars settlements, and their creations are stunning.

In the HP Mars Home Planet Rendering Challenge, over 87,000 people from all over the world flexed their creative muscles to design the perfect colony on the Red Planet. Last summer, when HP launched the challenge, the participants started working on their designs, and the winners were announced on Aug. 14.

This challenge wasn’t just about creating a pretty, futuristic-looking, idealistic Martian colony. Indeed, the designs also had to show how the settlements would support 1 million colonists. The surface of the Red Planet is harsh, with an extremely thin atmosphere, intense radiation and dust storms that occasionally envelop the planet. [Mars Ice Home: A Red Planet Colony Concept in Pictures].

Could a planet ever collide with Earth?

The universe is a big place, so when we get beautiful images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, they cover a very small spot in the sky that may not fully represent what the universe at large looks like. To change that, we’re expanding our view by significantly enlarging the area covered around huge galaxy clusters previously seen to get a better look at the universe. Take a look: https://go.nasa.gov/2QAw5hc

The jet’s apparent (but not actual) superluminal velocity provide new constraints on the merger and its aftermath.

• By Mike Wall, SPACE.com on September 7, 2018

SpaceX’s CEO shrugs off 20 years of NASA research.

SORRY, ELON. To be ready for human occupants, Elon Musk has long called Mars a “fixer-upper of a planet.” But according to a new NASA-sponsored study, a better description might be a “tear-down.” The scientists behind that project say it’s simply not possible to terraform Mars — that is, change its environment so that humans can live there without life support systems — using today’s technology.

BUILDING AN ATMOSPHERE. Mars has a super thin atmosphere; a human unprotected on the surface of Mars would quickly die, mostly because there’s not enough atmospheric pressure to prevent all your organs from rupturing out of your body (if you survived a little longer, you could also suffocate from lack of oxygen, freeze from low temperatures, or get fried from too much ultraviolet radiation).

Continue reading “Scientists Say We Can’t Terraform Mars. Elon Musk Says We Can” »