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December 21, 2012

Landmark Year in Private Space Flight Development
Washington DC (VOA) Dec 21, 2012
With NASA's retired shuttles mothballed in museums, 2012 saw a new kind of spacecraft blaze its own path toward the International Space Station. In May, the Dragon space capsule - developed, owned and operated by California-based SpaceX - was launched from atop a Falcon-9 rocket, becoming the first private craft to dock with the ISS. A feat achieved by only a few governments, the docking, says SpaceX chief Elon Musk, signaled more than a mere technological breakthrough. "This was a crucial s ... read more

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SSL And Sea Launch Announce Successful Completion Of Investigation Space Systems/Loral (SSL) and Sea Launch AG have jointly reported that the Independent Oversight Board (IOB) formed to investigate the solar array deployment anomaly on a satellite launched in the s ... more		Meteorite triggered scientific gold rush A meteorite that exploded as a fireball over California's Sierra foothills this past spring was among the fastest, rarest meteorites known to have hit the Earth, and it traveled a highly eccentric o ... more		Clays on Mars: More Plentiful Than Expected A new study co-authored by the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that clay minerals, rocks that usually form when water is present for long periods of time, cover a larger portion of Mars th ... more
				MEXSAT Bicentenario Satellite Sends First Signals from Space The MEXSAT Bicentenario satellite, built by Boeing [NYSE: BA] partner Orbital Sciences Corporation [NYSE: ORB], sent its first signals from space Wednesday following launch from Kourou aboard an Ari ... more		Opportunity For Some Shoulder Workout At Copper Cliff Opportunity is working at "Matijevic Hill" (named in honor of Jake Matijevic) at the inboard edge of "Cape York" on the rim of Endeavour Crater. There, the rover has been conducting in-situ (c ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Eighth Landsat Satellite Arrives at Launch Site An oversized semi-trailer truck carrying NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) has arrived at its launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in preparation for launch. This NASA ... more		Saturn's Transit of Venus on Dec. 21, 2012 Last June, astronomers urged sky watchers to observe the transit of Venus. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, they said. The black disk of the second planet wouldn't crawl across the face of t ... more		Russia says neutralised 20 drones, 2 missiles Russian missile barrage on Ukraine city kills 18 Solomons' PM contender vows to abolish China security pact		Origin of life emerged from cell membrane bioenergetics A coherent pathway which starts from no more than rocks, water and carbon dioxide and leads to the emergence of the strange bio-energetic properties of living cells, has been traced for the first ti ... more
				MIT researchers discover a new kind of magnetism Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously kno ... more		Swansong Biospheres: The last refuges for life on the far-future Earth Billions of years from now, life on Earth will be extinguished when the dying Sun scorches the surface of our planet. New research has aimed to determine what the last life forms on Earth will be, a ... more

Solar systems for home and business

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Ariane 5 ECA orbits Skynet 5D and Mexsat Bicentenario satellites On Wednesday, December 19, 2012, Arianespace successfully carried out the 53rd Ariane 5 launch in a row, orbiting two payloads: the Skynet 5D military communications satellite for Astrium Services, ... more		Shot Away from its Companion, Giant Star Makes Waves Like a ship plowing through still waters, the giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is speeding through space, making waves in the dust ahead. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a dramatic, infrared por ... more		Indonesia evacuating thousands after volcano erupts, causes tsunami threat Vote counting starts in Solomon Islands as China, US trade barbs 'Human-induced' climate change behind deadly Sahel heatwave: study		How white dwarfs mimic black holes A remarkable observation by astronomers from the University of Southampton has been published in one of the world's foremost astrophysics research journals. The research by Professor Phil Char ... more
				Southampton researchers find a glitch' in pulsar 'glitch' theory Researchers from the University of Southampton have called in to question a 40 year-old theory explaining the periodic speeding up or 'glitching' of pulsars. A pulsar is a highly magnetised ro ... more		Monster Black Holes The black hole at the center of this galaxy is part of a survey of 18 of the biggest black holes in the universe. This large elliptical galaxy is in the center of the galaxy cluster PKS 0745-19, whi ... more

NASA probes crash into the moon

Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored

GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride

Opportunity For Some Shoulder Workout At Copper Cliff

Clays on Mars: More Plentiful Than Expected

Curiosity Rover Explores 'Yellowknife Bay'

TDRS-K Arrives at Kennedy for Launch Processing

Sierra Nevada Corporation Selected by NASA to Receive Human Spaceflight Certification Products Contract

What happens to plant growth when you remove gravity?

Mr Xi in Space

China plans manned space launch in 2013: state media

China to launch manned spacecraft

	Turbulent eddies may warm the solar wind The Sun ejects a continuous flow of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields in the form of the solar wind. One of the long-standing puzzles of solar physics is that the solar wind is hott ... more		Astronomers identify the stellar patrons of the Milky Way bar Forget the restaurant at the end of the Universe - astronomers now have the clearest understanding yet of the bar at the center of the Milky Way. Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I ... more		The Webb Telescope's Holiday Package This photo shows the James Webb Space Telescope's "IEC" all wrapped up in a thermal blanket, and looking like a holiday package at a cleanroom in NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ... more		The Herschel Space Observatory needs you An astronomer from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is leading a global study to help find holes in dust clouds. Professor Derek Ward-Thompson has been joined by astronomers who us ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

GOGO Inks Major Capacity Deal With SES To Launch Transatlantic Aeronautical Broadband Service		Gilat Expands Military Customer Portfolio with Southeast Asian Navy Contract		Three astronauts blast off for ISS in Russian craft		New Trio Launches to Join Expedition 34		Nearby star is good candidate for Earth-like planets
Health Concerns Could Ground Citizen Astronauts		From Cassini for the Holidays: A Splendor Seldom Seen		Curiosity Rover Explores 'Yellowknife Bay'		Sierra Nevada Corporation Selected by NASA to Receive Human Spaceflight Certification Products Contract		Rocketdyne Reaches Milestone for J-2X powerpack

Boeing Ships 3rd Intelsat 702MP Satellite for Launch

Penn Metamaterials Experts Show a Way to Reduce Electrons' Effective Mass to Nearly Zero

Boeing Delivers 2 Nanosatellites to US Air Force

TDRS-K Arrives at Kennedy for Launch Processing

Berkeley Lab Scientists Developing Quick Way to ID People Exposed to Ionizing Radiation

China launches Turkish EO satellite

Beating Heart of J-2X Engine Finishes Year of Testing

CU-Boulder team develops swarm of pingpong ball-sized robots

Venus transit and lunar mirror could help astronomers find worlds around other stars

Payload integration complete for final 2012 Ariane 5 mission

Loral Continues Corporate Office Restructuring

ESA's powerful new tracking station ready for service

Spatial FOG Released

Experiment Examining a SLICE of the Interstellar Medium

Math formula gives new glimpse into the magical mind of Ramanujan

Lights to combat astronaut insomnia

NASA probes crash into the moon

Raytheon wins DARPA contract to design new military imaging satellites

AEHF Team Completes Major Integration Milestone Ahead Of Schedule

Israel's air force gets ready for a blitz against missile foes

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