Space yays

[Cuddly Khan]

Found on that same site as yours Fishy. Thought it was pretty interesting. http://io9.com/5906300/5-scientific-explanations-for-game-of-thrones-messed-up-seasons

[Glaurung]

News from the Curiosity rover on Mars: there are substantial deposits of sedimentary rocks, implying the existence of lakes and rivers in Mars' early history. More in a BBC News article, with some nice pictures and a link to the relevant NASA website.

[Cuddly Khan]

Oooo, Portugal! Were there astronauts on that?

[comrade_general]

 

[comrade_general]

http://gizmodo.com/every-ship-that-has-carried-humans-into-space-in-one-c-1665286013

[TTG4]

Beagle 2 actually made it! They thought it was lost, turned out it just broke!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30784886

[Son of the King]

Reading this story made me feel happy, and also made me sad that Colin Pillinger never found out that it didn't crash after all.

[Jubal]

The fact that it landed at all is impressive given how cheap the mission was; it's a great pity we haven't been funding more missions like that really.

[comrade_general]

http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/kepler-discovers-solar-systems-ancient-twin-150127.htm?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=DiscoveryChannel

[comrade_general]

http://www.iflscience.com/space/solar-system-speed-light

[Fish Priest]

Apparently there has now been a successful soft-landing of a Falcon 9 first stage. Unfortunately it was in the ocean, as rough seas meant that they didn't think they could keep their landing barge in place.

But still, it came down slowly, on rockets, the right way up, as God and E.E. 'Doc' Smith intended

[amusingthebrood]

With the Falcon 9 soft landing there seem to be two main challenges:

• Getting it in the right place (with a very small margin of error, the barges aren't that huge)
• Getting it to stay upright

To my (very uneducated in this field) mind, the first bit seems much harder to achieve (not that I am claiming the upright bit is easy of course). Yet with both attempts so far, it has been spot on target. It is very impressive technically, and if the stages can genuinely be reused safely, it is very cool indeed.

[Jubal]

It's certainly impressive.

Elon Musk I think definitely wins the current global award for "I'm going to use my billionaire status to do ridiculous but cool stuff". Probably high up on the impact stakes as well, though below the Gates foundation on that.

[comrade_general]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/12/8199689/jupiter-moon-ganymede-hidden-ocean-water

Jupiter pretty much has its own private planetary system.

[comrade_general]

http://www.nasa.gov/content/a-year-in-space/index.html?linkId=13158669