Carnival of Space #477

Presenting… The Carnival of Space!

To learn more, click here then read on!

NASA Scientists Believe the Hubble has Detected Water Plumes Erupting from Europa
Mark Wittington | Blasting News

A group of #NASA scientists announced that 15 months worth of observations from the #Hubble Space Telescope might have detected water plumes erupting from beneath the ice crust of #Europa, a moon of Jupiter thought to contain a subsurface ocean. The ocean, scientists theorize, is…

Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson Proposes Space Colonies in Response to Climate Change
Mark Wittington | Blasting News

#Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, was being interviewed on “This Week” on ABC when the question was put to him about #Climate Change, the theory that human use of fossil fuels in pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is raising the temperature of the Earth. Johnson offered an unusual policy prescription for the problem, according to the Washington Examiner. He said “we do have to inhabit other planets. The future of the human race is #Space exploration.”

Student Team at Cornell Creating a CubeSat With Water as Propellant to Orbit the Moon
Mark Wittington | Blasting News

A team of students at Cornell University is creating a #CubeSat, a tiny satellite no bigger than a breadbox, that it hopes to fly in orbit around the moon as part of a NASA-sponsored competition, according to #moon Daily. The innovative part of the Cornell Cubesat is that it will carry water as propellant. Water, which covers most of the Earth’s surface, is one of the more common substances in space. The moon is filled with deposits of water ice in permanently shadowed craters. Individual asteroids and comets contain water as well. The idea is that eventually spacecraft will…

SpaceX’s Elon Musk is Already Setting His Sights Beyond Mars
Mark Wittington | Blasting News

#SpaceX’s Elon Musk intends to open his mind further about his plans to colonize Mars, which included starting robotic probes by 2018 and a crewed expedition as early as 2025, at a conference in Mexico late in September. But the sharp-eyed Eric Berger at Ars Technica has noticed a series of tweets from the commercial space tycoon that suggest that his ambitions are already expanding beyond #Mars.

Hillary Clinton Says That She Supports NASA’s Journey to Mars
Mark Wittington | Blasting News

The aerospace newspaper Space News reported the results of a questionnaire sent to the presidential candidates by ScienceDebate.org on the subject of space policy. None of the candidates went into too much detail and, indeed, libertarian candidate Gary Johnson did not respond at all. However, Democratic nominee #Hillary Clinton announced that she supports the exploration of Mars. “A goal of my administration will be to expand this knowledge even further and advance our ability to make human exploration of Mars a reality.”

Episode 20 of the Science on the ISS Podcasts Investigates Project Sidekick
Janet | Cheap Astronomy

Why We All Use the Same Units
Ryan Marciniak | The Solstice Blog

We all use the same units in science, even though some of the world doesn’t use the metric system. This multi-million dollar lesson was learned the hard way.

Chandra Detects the First X-rays Coming From Our Kuiper Belt
Lisse and McNutt | Chandra X-Ray Observatory Blog

We are pleased to welcome a pair of distinguished guests to the Chandra blog. Carey Lisse is currently a principal staff scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL). He has used ACE, Chandra, EUVE, HST, ROSAT, Spitzer, and XMM-Newton as well as numerous ground based telescopes to study the physical properties of many Solar System objects. Ralph McNutt Jr. is a physicist also at JHU-APL. Among his many other positions, he serves as the co-investigator for the PEPSSI instrument aboard New Horizons. He also been the principal investigator on many other spacecraft and experiments designed to explore the Solar System and beyond. Lisse and McNutt are the 1st and 2nd authors of a paper that is the basis for our latest press release, about the surprising…

X-ray Detection Sheds New Light on Pluto
Megan Watzke, CXC | Chandra X-Ray Observatory Blog

The first detection of Pluto in X-rays has been made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in conjunction with observations from NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft. As reported in our press release this result offers new insight into the environment surrounding the largest and best-known object in the solar system’s outermost regions.

As New Horizons approached Pluto in late 2014 and then flew by the planet during the summer of 2015, Chandra obtained data during four separate observations. During each observation, Chandra detected…

ASU 2016-08
NASA press release images selected and captioned by ASU for August, 2016.

Just added another 10 NASA press release images to our Flickr page. Enjoy. Mars, Ceres, Comet 67P, Titan, and Rhea

Geysers on Europa? Hubble Space Telescope Finds More Evidence for Water Vapour Plumes
Paul Scott Anderson | Planetaria

Intriguing new findings about Jupiter’s moon Europa were announced today by NASA, and while they don’t involve any direct evidence for life, they do provide more information on how scientists could better search for such evidence, without having to drill through the icy crust to the ocean below. The new observations, by the Hubble Space Telescope, have added to the evidence for active water vapour plumes on Europa – an exciting possibility, since they would possibly originate from the subsurface ocean, similar to the plumes on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And just like the Cassini spacecraft has already done at Enceladus, those plumes – geysers really…

THE AGE OF ASTRONOMY. 4/7 Artifacts: Nebra sky disk 1600BC
Stefan Lamoureux | Links Through Space

Here at Links through Space we introduce a series of 7 articles on the Age of Astronomy.
This series focuses on tangible evidence such as relics, artifacts, astronomical alignments and star maps that establishes the age of Astronomy.
Follow our Ancient Astronomy Series: THE AGE OF ASTRONOMY.
Read the posts and find out the true age of astronomy. 4/7 Artifacts: Nebra sky disk 1600BC

Rosetta Wows With Amazing Closeups of Comet 67P Before Final ‘Crunchdown’
Bob King | Universe Today/em>