On Friday, ESA astronaut Tim Peake got to toy around with a test rover on Earth from the International Space Station. This is a great demonstration of how humans on the International Space Station could actually control rovers on other planets with wireless signals, such as on Mars. In the testing, Peake drove the rover through indoor simulated caves in a controlled environment that was built to simulate the rough and rugged Martian environment. The project could evolve into a real thing where a human-controlled rover gets placed on Mars and can be controlled remotely. Current rovers on the red planet are mostly autonomous, and do many things on their own without human intervention. The project is dubbed Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network or Meteron for short. While driving the rover around in the simulated environment, Peake is achieving goals, reaching checkpoints, and mapping out the location here on Earth from all the way up in the International Space Station. As the BBC reports, it’s a tricky thing to master. Peake has to deal with latency issues that occur from the command signals needing to bounce from the International Space Station all the way to the rover, which involves bouncing off of several nodes in the process. All this activity means there are a few seconds of delay between the signal getting there and Peake actually sending it. Nevertheless, Peake is getting used to the learning curve and is reportedly having a blast. By having humans control rovers on other planets, we can better deal with situations that may occur. Computers are great at performing boring repetitive tasks, but when it comes to decision-making, humans are better for the job. Such technology could help plant the seed for the ESA's plans to have rovers drilling into the Martian surface. Source: BBC, DailyMail

Northern Chile is home to the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert. The average yearly rainfall is only 15 millimeters (1.5cm), and in an extremely dry part of it, the ‘hyperarid core,’ there had been no rainfall for 500 years - until about three years ago. Rain began to fall in the area, and researchers have found that the unexpected precipitation has had a devastating impact on the local microbial life. Microbes that were adapted to a very arid environment could not handle a sudden influx of torrential water. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports. The video below describes one of these rare rain events, and the ensuing flower blooms it caused. "Our group has discovered that, contrary to what could be expected intuitively, the never-before-seen rainfall has not triggered a flowering of life in Atacama, but instead the rains have caused enormous devastation in the microbial species that inhabited the region before the heavy precipitations,” explained study co-author Dr. Alberto G. Fairén. "Our work shows that high rainfall has caused the massive extinction of most indigenous microbial species. The extinction range reaches 85 percent as a result of the osmotic stress that has caused the sudden abundance of water: the autochthonous microorganisms, which were perfectly adapted to thrive under conditions of extreme dryness and had strategies optimized for the extraction of the scarce humidity of their environment, have been unable to adapt to the new conditions of sudden flooding and have died from excess water,” added Fairén. This research can also provide some insight into how microbial life might have evolved on Mars. It is an extremely dry planet and in ancient time, had catastrophic flooding. "Mars had a first period, the Noachian (between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago), in which there was a lot of water on its surface," said Fairén. "We know this from the enormous amount of hydrogeological evidence still present in the Martian surface, in the form of ubiquitous hydrated minerals, traces of dried rivers and lakes, deltas, and perhaps a hemispheric ocean in the northern plains." Somewhere around 4 billion years ago, Mars lost its atmosphere, and all the water on the planet dried up. “But at times during the Hesperian period (3.5 to 3 billion years ago), large volumes of water carved its surface in the form of outflow channels, the largest channels in the Solar System.” As the planet desiccated, it may have undergone processes that are similar to what we can observe at Atacama. “If there were still microbial communities withstanding the process of extreme drying, they would have been subjected to processes of osmotic stress similar to those we have studied in Atacama,” explained Fairén. "Therefore, our Atacama study suggests that the recurrence of liquid water on Mars could have contributed to the disappearance of Martian life, if it ever existed, instead of representing an opportunity for resilient microbiota to bloom again,” added Fairén. This work also shows that huge nitrate deposits at Atacama indicate that our planet has long dry periods in its past. The nitrates were primarily found in former lake beds and valley bottoms, left behind by occasional rain from around 13 million years ago. Those nitrates are a valuable food source for microbes. They may also be similar to nitrate deposits found by Curiosity, the Mars Rover. Previous work by Fairén and colleagues showed that short periods of wetness on early Mars could explain that martian mineralogy. The video above from NASA describes the mission of the Curiosity Rover, and its recent discovery of ancient organic material on Mars. Sources: AAAS/Eurekalert! via CSIC, Scientific Reports

After what felt like eons of hype, SpaceX officially launched its Falcon Heavy mega-rocket from launch pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:45 P.M. on Tuesday. Astonishingly, its maiden flight went much smoother than many had anticipated. Image Credit: SpaceX/YouTube It wasn’t long after the Falcon Heavy’s 27 Merlin engines fired up that the rocket took flight. It kicked up a lot more steam than a Falcon 9 rocket would, but the lift-off was just as majestic as we’d expect from the latter. Once the space vehicle reached optimal altitude, its two side boosters detached from the central core and fell back to Earth to land on solid ground. Shortly after, the center core separated from the payload and fell back to Earth. It attempted to land on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean but didn't quite make it. Related: SpaceX wants to launch Falcon 9 rockets every couple of weeks Despite having its engine power throttled down to just 92% of peak performance, the Falcon Heavy generated a respectable amount of thrust and launched its special payload into space – a red Tesla Roadster electric car with a spacesuit-wearing dummy sitting in the driver’s seat. Cameras mounted all over the Tesla Roadster delivered live footage of outer space from all angles around the car. You can watch that stream below: Given SpaceX’s fascination with Mars, the Tesla Roadster will head in that general direction. The car won’t ever land on Mars, but it will follow the red planet around for an eternity as it orbits the Sun. Despite the loss of the Falcon Heavy's central core, the launch was was an impressive achievement for SpaceX and a significant step in the right direction for humankind. The space vehicle’s sheer power makes it into the ideal rocket for future Moon or Mars-based missions and its reusability could keep the price tag low enough to promote said missions. These are indeed exciting times to be alive; especially if you have any interest in space exploration. Source: SpaceX

NASA’s Opportunity rover surpassed a momentous milestone this weekend after experiencing its 5,000th Martian Dawn. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Pancam When Opportunity first landed on the Martian surface on January 25th, 2004, NASA engineers weren’t expecting the rover to survive more than 90 Martian sols (90 Martian days). Nevertheless, it continues to explore the Martian surface and relay information back to scientists on Earth to this very day. Image Credit: NASA "Five thousand sols after the start of our 90-sol mission, this amazing rover is still showing us surprises on Mars," said a very excited John Callas, the Opportunity Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Related: NASA says the Curiosity rover's wheels are beginning to break Citing an official statement by NASA, Opportunity has accumulated more than 28.02 miles on its odometer since reaching the Martian surface more than 14 years ago. Furthermore, the rover has sent more than 225,000 individual photographs back to Earth for analysis; most of those are available online for your viewing pleasure. "We've reached lots of milestones, and this is one more," Callas continued, "but more important than the numbers are the exploration and the scientific discoveries." Related: NASA rover finds mud cracks on the Martian surface Opportunity’s various science instruments have probed countless craters scattered along the Martian surface. Much of what we know today about Mars’ watery past can be attributed to data gathered by the rover along the way. Today, Opportunity can be found roughly one-third of the way down Mars’ “Perseverance Valley;” it continues to venture into unexplored territory with the hope that we might discover something astonishing. There’s no way of knowing just how many more sols the rover might endure before reaching the end of its life, but one can only hope that it’ll remain operational for a long time to come. Source: NASA

NASA’s Curiosity rover currently sits at the forefront of the American space agency’s web page this week after capturing a breath-taking 360-degree panoramic selfie. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS In an official statement, NASA explains how Curiosity grabbed the panoramic selfie at Mars’ Vera Rubin Ridge shortly after using a new drilling technique to collect rock samples for chemical analysis. In addition to the still image above, NASA uploaded the following interactive video to YouTube, enabling viewers to pan around and observe the surrounding scenery by clicking and dragging: Right off the bat, we can see that the planet-wide dust storm that enveloped Mars in June is indeed subsiding. What’s more is that it left some dust remnants on Curiosity’s top deck. But perhaps the most striking detail we can discern from the panoramic image is just how colorful Vera Rubin Ridge appears to be. "The ridge isn't this monolithic thing -- it has two distinct sections, each of which has a variety of colors," explained Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Some are visible to the eye and even more show up when we look in near-infrared, just beyond what our eyes can see. Some seem related to how hard the rocks are." Related: The Curiosity rover's wheels are beginning to break down The region’s colorful aesthetics seem to correlate with the hardness of the surrounding rocks, with one color denoting harder compositions and another color signifying softer ones. Intriguingly, it’s perhaps one of the most diverse places on Mars that Curiosity has ever visited. With the help of Curiosity’s onboard sampling mechanisms, NASA hopes to learn why some of the rocks at Vera Rubin Ridge are harder than others. Early speculation suggests that high hematite levels could have something to do with it. Curiosity will perform two additional drilling attempts this month at Vera Rubin Ridge in an effort to learn more about it. Afterward, NASA says it will ascend to its next destination: a mineral-enriched region further up Mt. Sharp. It should be fascinating to see what we’ll learn from these analyses. Source: NASA

The Earth is the only known habitable planet in the solar system, yet curious minds still wonder: what would happen if you visited another world without a space suit and how long would you survive there? While the answer seems obvious at first glance, you’d be surprised to know that the circumstances vary greatly from one planet to the next. Mercury, for example, is rather peculiar. Its proximity to the Sun means that one side of the planet can reach scorching temperatures that exceed 430 degrees Celsius, but Mercury rotates so slowly that the cooler side can dip below -180 degrees Celsius. If you visited Mercury, you’d either freeze or bake to death, depending on which side you walked on. Venus also sports extreme temperatures, but not because of its proximity to the Sun; instead, its dense atmosphere is to blame. Greenhouse gasses in Mercury’s atmosphere trap heat from the Sun, resulting in temperatures that exceed 470 degrees Celsius – that’s hotter than Mercury. Consequently, you’d be vaporized if you even tried to set foot on Venus. Mars is perhaps the only other potentially-habitable planet in our solar system, but you still couldn’t live there without a space suit. It’s relatively cool with an average annual temperature of -60 degrees Celsius, but Mars lacks an Earth-like atmospheric pressure. Upon stepping on Mars’ surface, you could probably survive for around two minutes before your organs ruptured. Jupiter is another no-go zone, as the gas giant lacks a solid surface to stand on. Upon entering the planet’s atmosphere, you’d fall and fall – but you wouldn’t survive until the end of the drop because the planet’s immense pressure would do you in beforehand. Sadly, the conditions are quite similar on Saturn, so we’ll move on. As for the final two full-sized planets in the solar system, Neptune and Uranus share similar properties. Both are incredibly cold, between -214 and -224 degrees Celsius and sport atmospheres comprised of methane gas. Assuming you survived the long trip to either of these planets, you wouldn’t last on the planets themselves because you’d either freeze to death or asphyxiate. Indeed, Earth is just perfect enough to survive without a spacesuit. Given just how beautiful Earth is, who’d want to live anywhere else anyway?

A manned mission to Venus? No thanks! you may think, with hellish surface conditions including crushing pressures, an average temperature a little under 900 degrees fahrenheit, and clouds of sulfuric acid. Yes, Venus has hellish surface conditions. But what if you didn't go all the way down to the surface? What about the upper atmosphere? It turns out that about 40 miles above the surface, conditions are kind of... nice. It's not like you can breathe the air. It's still almost entirely carbon dioxide, but the temperatures average only around 100 degrees, and the atmospheric pressure is about the same as Earth's at sea level. Okay, better, you might think, but how do you stay in the upper atmosphere? How about with airships and eventually a cloud city? Sound like science fiction? Well, according to NASA, not necessarily.The High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) is NASA's plan for exploring Venus from on high. It would begin with a robot airship, followed by a manned airship, and eventually a floating base to allow for a permanent human presence in Venus' atmosphere."What does the future of humankind in space look like?" asks Chris Jones, co-lead of the HAVOC project. "Frankly, we see Venus as potentially no later than the second planetary destination that humans might go to, after Mars or even before Mars." Why? Well, it takes much less time to get to Venus, about half they time it would take to get to Mars. That makes a Venus mission what Jones calls a "stepping stone or practice run" to get humans to Mars. "The best would be a long lived surface lander, but technology issues for surface robotic missions are pretty significant, and a human mission to surface is nearly insurmountable. What's left is a good platform for a science mission at mid-level altitudes, and it paints a good picture for a human mission in the atmosphere at 50 kilometers.""Air itself is a lifting gas at those altitudes," Jones explains, "so you don't have to bring some ridiculous supply of helium for this to work." What he means is that the air we breathe here on Earth is lighter than the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus, so we could fill our venusian airships with it. "And the rest of the environmental parameters at 50 kilometers are actually quite nice," Jones continues. "The gravity is about the same as on Earth's surface, the atmospheric pressure is about the same as Earth, and we can potentially manufacture a significant amount of that air by processing carbon dioxide. These are some of the facts we saw early on that inspired us to do this."Solar power would not be a problem, as we could mount solar panels on the skins of our airships. There would even be protection from solar radiation, more protection than there would be on the surface of Mars.In Jones' team's plan, a crew would spend about 123 days travelling to Venus, explore the planet from the air for 30 days, and then spend another 287 days getting back to Earth (440 days total). The mission is still in the planning stages, but it is completely doable. It would require no new technology. In fact, NASA had plans for a manned flyby of Venus back in the 60's using Apollo hardware. (Source: Space.com)

Humans have explored the solar system for decades with various kinds of spacecraft. Some were designed to orbit the Earth and its neighbors, while others were made to study the outermost planets and their unique systems. Most of the spacecraft we've sent into space have stayed within our general neighborhood, but just a select few of them are hurtling out of the solar system, headed for a long trip through interstellar space. Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to land on another planet when it dropped onto the Venusian surface. Shortly after, Mariner 9 became the first probe to orbit Mars. Galileo would then become the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. Several launches later, some of the most famous spacecraft still in action today are the Cassini probe at Saturn (which is close to ending soon), the New Horizons probe at Pluto (which now targets a Kuiper Belt Object), and the Juno probe at Jupiter. Of all the spacecraft we've ever launched, Voyager 1 is the furthest away from us today. It was one of two satellites launched to explore the outer solar system, but because it gets energy from nuclear power instead of solar, it will stay functional even as it moves into interstellar space.

While chemical burn rockets are the industry standard for launching spacecraft beyond Earth’s atmosphere, the bigger question concerns how we should tackle thrust after the spacecraft reaches outer space. This is especially important considering how interest in long-term space missions continues to grow. Ion-powered rockets potentially offer a tangible solution. This form of thrust accelerates charged atoms through a magnetic field and then out the back of the spacecraft. It produces less thrust than a chemical burn rocket, but it uses little fuel in the process and lasts much longer than a chemical burn. Because this propulsion method doesn’t require as much fuel, it can theoretically go much farther than a chemical burn rocket. Furthermore, the lack of friction in space would result in thrust multiplication over time. The ion-powered rocket concept has been around for decades, but it wasn’t until recently that engineers worked out some of the quirks that made them infeasible. With additional research and development, perhaps engineers will devise the perfect setup that could one day take humans to Mars.

For every second, the solar wind blasts the Earth with millions of billions of high energy particles, and thanks to the magnetosphere of our planet, the magnetized bubble of plasma created by its magnetic field, we are shielded from these harmful solar radiations. But for astronauts who are on the international space station for an extended period or a future mission to neighboring planets like Mars, their risks of developing cancer would be exponentially higher due to the prolonged exposure to strong cosmic radiation. Since the 1960s, scientists have long proposed devising a compact yet effective magnetic field in a spacecraft to deflect most of the charged particles. In 2008, an international physics team demonstrated that it is feasible to shield spacecraft using an artificial magnetosphere, in both computer simulation and a laboratory test. Their data suggested that a magnetic bubble about 330-660 feet (100–200 m) across powered by 1 Tesla-strength magnet would provide sufficient protection against cosmic radiation. Source: ACS Reaction via Youtube

The construction of the most powerful rocket ever to leave the surface of the Earth is underway at NASA. Known as the SLS rocket, it will be responsible for taking the Orion spacecraft into space for deep space missions. The super strong rockets strapped to the side of the main rocket will be designed to take payloads as heavy as 80,000 tons, and provide approximately 75% of the thrust needed. The remaining 25% of thrust is provided by four RS-25 engines, which are tried and true engines that were originally featured on NASA's space shuttle. Still, this is only the initial testing for such a rocket system. NASA says they're also testing even more powerful rockets, which in the future could be able to transport more than 140 tons of materials, which would be perfect for mankind's habitation on other planets or even the Moon. The future of space travel technology is expanding at an incredible rate. It won't be long now before the first humans get to land on Mars.

NASA’s Psyche mission will investigate the properties of a unique metallic asteroid residing between Mars and Jupiter as it orbits the Sun. It’s believed that Psyche could be the nickel-iron core of a planet that failed planet from early in the solar system, and so it provides lots of opportunities to learn more about how worlds like this come to be. Impact experiments conducted as NASA’s Ames Vertical Gun Range have shown that metallic asteroids like Psyche exhibit particularly interesting surface impacts. Unlike rocky worlds, which exhibit craters with flat ridges, metallic worlds such as Psyche exhibit craters with flappy ridges, and this is purportedly a result of the harder material. By visiting and exploring Psyche, we can learn whether the world is actually the core of a failed planet or if it’s un-melted material. Perhaps more importantly, scientific instruments could tell us the age of the surface and identify the topographic composition of the world as a whole. Psyche promises to be a game changer as we continue to explore the solar system around us.

NASA’s upcoming Artemis mission will bring the Moon back into focus as we attempt to learn more about what it takes to become a multi-planetary species. Artemis won’t just be an Apollo re-run, but rather it will be an entirely new and ambitious mission aimed at better understanding the dynamics of the Moon and deep space overall. While Apollo astronauts spent just hours or days on the lunar surface, Artemis astronauts will potentially spend weeks there, searching the lunar surface for important resources and conducting modern scientific experiments. Both a man and a woman will travel to the Moon on one of NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System (SLS) rockets. But the astronauts won’t simply land on the lunar surface as they did during the Apollo missions; instead, they’ll hitch a ride to a Moon-orbiting space station that NASA wants to call the “Lunar Gateway.” From here, a lunar lander could dispatch astronauts to the lunar surface as needed, and they could then return to the Gateway when their mission is up. While Artemis will deal solely with the Moon, what we learn from it could push humankind much further into deep space, such as Mars. That said, exciting times are just ahead.

NASA's Curiosity rover sports a unique drilling tool that lets the SUV-sized Mars exploration vehicle sample the red planet's rock and soil for scientific research. But there's just one problem: it hasn't been working correctly lately. Curiosity's drilling mechanism includes two stabilizers on either side of the drill bit that should grip the drilling surface. Unfortunately, a problem with the drilling system causes these grips to get in the way, so NASA had to improvise. The space agency came up with an entirely new drilling method that doesn't use the stabilizers at all. Instead, NASA retracts the stabilizers and remotely controls the rover's drilling pressure with the help of a pressure sensor built into the drilling arm itself. NASA engineers used this new drilling method once already, and it yielded spectacular results. That said, you can bet NASA plans to use it again in the future for additional sampling of the Martian surface.

Beyond Neptune is a unique region of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. This particular area of space is a lot like the asteroid belt, except that it's much further away from the Sun and that the objects are icier than those found just beyond Mars. Because of how far away these objects are from us, they're challenging to study. To make matters worse, many of them are dark in color, so observing them with the Hubble Space Telescope is a no-go. Scientists think that the Kuiper Belt might hold some meaningful answers about the formation of our solar system, especially considering that Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are believed to be very old. That said, it isn't surprising why astronomers have so much interest in exploring the region. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to visit a Kuiper Belt Object known as 2014 MU69. It'll be the first time astronomers ever study a KBO up close, and it just might help us answer some questions about what it's like so far away from the Sun.

When it's budget review time in Washington, it helps if an agency or department requesting money has something to show off. No one could argue that NASA has certainly been bringing it home lately. Budget hearings for the space agency are underway now and are dominated by the recent success of the New Horizons Pluto fly by. When a government agency has brought back such an epic amount of data and photos, a good case can be made for continued funding. NASA's Dr. John Grunsfeld spoke to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology saying, "Are we alone? We are on the cusp of being able to answer that question because of the investments we're making in space technology." While the Pluto mission went extremely well, the scientists at NASA are not resting on their laurels. There are planned missions to Mars and the Jupiter moon, Europa. The budget for the Planetary Sciences division of NASA was approved recently, however it was increased by taking funds from the Earth Sciences division, so the discussion on what to fund and how much to allocate to which programs is one to watch.

The International Space Station is an incredible place to take photographs, as many former astronauts have shown. Now, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli renews that interest with his latest footage: a video of a moonrise happening on planet Earth. Nespoli captured this footage on September 18th as a time lapse, which means the event is sped up from the original time duration. As the Moon comes into the frame, the Earth's atmosphere glows with bright white light; this is essentially sunlight that's reflecting off the Moon's surface and toward the Earth's atmosphere. Inside the frame, you can see lights from civilization on Earth's dry land. Peeking at you from the background of the shot are Mars and Venus, two of the closest planets to Earth in the solar system at any given time. It's incredible to see these kinds of fascination shots from the astronauts' point of view, especially since most of us will never get to see it in person.

The Earth is made up of about two-thirds water, and scientists have thrown around ideas for years about where all of this water may have come from. Although the great debate is still in the air, many have thought that the Earth had received all of its water from comet impacts, but new research indicates that the water may have come from rocks in between the planets of Mars and Jupiter, which were supposed to form yet another rocky planet, which is better known as the asteroid belt. As these rocks come crashing down on the surface of the Earth, the impact generates a lot of heat, which as demonstrated in the video above, can release all of the water that has been chemically bonded to the rock into the skies, allowing it to rain down on the Earth's soil. Despite the fact that the amount of water from each rock may not have been a lot, considering the fact that the Earth is more than 4 billion years old, it has had quite a while to collect this water.

Earlier this month, SpaceX completed a successful test fire of the engine that will power the commercial space company's upcoming Falcon Heavy rocket. Capable of lifting a staggering 37,000 pounds to Mars, this Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful ever built by SpaceX. If you look closely, it looks almost like three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together, but we assure you it's a bit more complicated than that. Like all the Falcon 9 rockets before it, all the Falcon Heavy's booster rockets will each be able to land upright on Earth for refurbishing and reuse after a successful launch. Falcon Heavy will officially launch in its entirety later this year; the maiden voyage is estimated for December, although it will be an unmanned rocket launch as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk doesn't want to chance catastrophic failure with an untested rocket technology. Only NASA's Saturn V rocket had more liftoff power than the Falcon Heavy rocket, but no rockets since then have come close to this kind of power.

Sometimes in those rough moments when life just hits you with some growing pains, it's good to remember that we as people are always evolving. But, of course, it's also important to remember how people as a species are also evolving. So, let's fast-forward 1,000 years into the future. What will the human race be like? Well, first of all, taller. That's just the continuation of a trend that's already happening. The average male back in the 1800s was 5'7'' while today the average male is 5'10''. But height isn't the only, and definitely not the most exciting way that humans will keep changing over the years. Some people will develop a genetic defense that prevents the HIV virus from turning into AIDS. That will likely happen naturally (some people already have those genes!), but with CRISPR technology, we will be able to make ourselves genetically immune to all sorts of other diseases as well. We may be even able to reverse the effects of aging! Want to hear more about what will happen to humans in the next millennium? (Hint, hint: immortality and how life on Mars affects our evolution!) Watch the video!

You probably hear the term 'space rock' getting thrown around a lot, but there are several kinds of space rocks, and it's important to know the distinctions between them. Some of the most prevalent types of space rocks are asteroids, comets, and meteors. Asteroids are fundamentally solid hunks of rock and metal. Many reside in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, where they orbit the Sun just like planets do, but they can move out of position occasionally from forces that are out of our control. Comets are icy rocks that ordinarily reside in the further reaches of the solar system. From time to time, these cold space rocks come too close to the Sun, and they begin exhibiting a tail when the Sun warms up the surface ice. Without its ice, a comet would be classified as an asteroid. Smaller rocks, which occur from asteroid and comet collisions, are known as meteoroids. These are the space rocks that most commonly fly into Earth's atmosphere, and many of them burn up before ever reaching the surface; those that make it through our atmosphere become known as meteorites. While astronomers have already found some of the solar system's most massive space rocks, they're always looking for new ones. Most of the uncharted space rocks out there are negligible, and charting them would be seemingly useless.

With the recent passing of the great John Glenn, a man who will forever be remembered as the first American to orbit the Earth, we look again to the sky and can’t help but wonder what else is out there. There is growing interest in what Mars has to offer, but NASA has been looking for Earth-size planets orbiting other stars since March 2009. NASA’s Kepler telescope has discovered more than half of today’s known Earth-like exoplanets. In our galaxy alone, there could be up to 40 billion exoplanets similar to earth. Don’t get too excited and pack your bags just yet, Proxima B is our closest Earth-like exoplanet that could support life at 4.2 lights years away. And while there is a chance of life, it’s believe that alien life is simple and would die young, so we don’t need to worry about an Indepence Day situation just yet. While the questions remains as to life on other planets or could we call another planet home, we still have lots to learn about our own planet.

Space exploration in 2015 was far from empty-handed. We learned a lot about various plants in our solar system last year. Among some of the most important findings were seeing Pluto up close in the successful New Horizons fly-by mission, and discovering flowing water on the surface of Mars. In 2016, space exploration will continue, and scientists are excited to continue learning more about not only our solar system, but also about what's going on deep in outer space. We will be launching several spacecrafts this year that allow us to see more of what we haven't seen with past or current spacecrafts and equipment. Among some of the things that we'll be taking a look at are Jupiter, with a dedicated probe designed to check for water in the gas planet's atmosphere, as well as a space telescope designed to look for X-Rays, which are invisible from the Earth's atmosphere. Indeed, there is much to learn, and 2016 is going to be yet another great year for space exploration and learning more about why we're here.

Between Mars and Jupiter in our solar system, there is a massive ring of asteroids that orbit the Sun. These make up what is known as the asteroid belt, and they vary in size, from really small rocks just inches in diameter, to the largest known asteroid, Ceres, which is over 600 miles across. But how did they all get there, and why are they all in one place? There are some theories suggesting that the asteroid belt's contents once made up a planet, and that some kind of destruction of that planet from a sudden impact may have destroyed it, causing it to crumble into a million pieces. But how likely is that? - Considering what we know about our solar system, maybe not so much, but it's definitely worth a thought. On the other hand, the planets closest to the Sun are solid, while the planets furthest from the Sun are gas, and that asteroid belt separates those two distinct types of planets. So it's possible that gravity could have played a role here, and that there was just too much interference for all of the little rocks to combine into a full-sized planet over time.

Although NASA hasn’t heard back from its Opportunity rover since a dust storm enveloped the planet of Mars last year, the space agency’s Curiosity rover continues business as usual. Curiosity has been exploring Mount Sharp’s Vera Rubin Ridge for more than a year due to its significance to scientific exploration. But NASA decided that it was time to move on, and so the Curiosity rover descended from the ridge and is headed to its next target. Before Curiosity left, it captured a 360-degree panorama of its surroundings; NASA compiled that panorama into a 360-degree video and shared it to YouTube over the weekend. Unlike a standard video, viewers can click and drag inside of the video frame to see around the rover. As you pan around, NASA highlights points of interest and describes their meanings. Some of those include the Clay Unit that Curiosity will explore during 2019, the drill holes left by Curiosity along the way, and the Gale Crater rim and floor off in the horizon.

In 1969, when NASA landed mankind on the Moon for the very first time, it was no easy task; and NASA wasn't even sure that they could accomplish it. Nonetheless, they tried their hardest, and it wasn't without its failures, but they finally made it. Back in the day when we didn't have all of the fancy computers and computing power that we have today to help us model everything out, all of these calculations had to be done by hand by rocket science experts. By putting a type of orbiter around orbit of the Moon, the orbiter could then drop a lander on the Moon that contained American astronauts, and that lander could then blast off from the Moon's surface to get back to the lander where it would then descent back to Earth. When it was said that it was ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,' Neil Armstrong was absolutely right. Mankind has visited the Moon over and over again, and now NASA wants to try to put a man on Mars.

If there's another planet out there in our solar system, where could it be? That's a question that astronomers have been trying to answer for years, but they've been coming up empty-handed. We've noticed strange tilts and variations in the orbits of our Solar System's outer planets that suggest something big is out there gravitationally-influencing the typical orbital rhythm. This has been blamed on a potential planet beyond Pluto that's being called "Planet 9," but astronomers are already looking for "Planet 10" despite never finding the latter. This planet would be so far away from the Sun that it wouldn't glimmer with reflection, and this makes finding it hard. Astronomers even think that it could be similar in size and mass to Earth and Mars. The theory arose after astronomers studied the orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt. After finding that the objects were orbiting on stranger planes than usual, it became apparent that something must have been gravitationally-tugging on them to cause it. Whether it's there or not is up for debate, but one thing for certain is that we need to get to the bottom of whether there are any other planets orbiting our Sun that we don't already know about.

A team of researchers from UC Santa Cruz, led by Michael Nayak, have been studying the strange chain of craters that appear on the surface of Mars’ closest-orbiting satellite: Phobos. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications. Image Credit: ESA/Mars Express, modified by Nayak & Asphaug Phobos is a moon of Mars, and it orbits the red planet more closely than any other known satellite orbits any other planet in our solar system. At just 5,600 miles above the planet’s surface, it completes an orbit around the red planet in less than seven hours, and it also falls within something known as the Roche Limit. Inside of the Roche Limit, a satellite is theoretically too close to its host planet to stay in-tact. In fact, the gravitational forces at work should theoretically be so detrimental to the moon that it experiences tidal forces strong enough to erode and crumble the moon over time. Evidence for this is seen across Phobos’ surface, where the moon is lumpy and disfigured and probably being warped by the strong gravitational forces. Ruptures in the surface and stress cracks are seen all over it. The chain of craters, on the other hand, is observed in almost a straight line across the moon’s surface, and scientists have been experimenting with computer models to figure out just how they might have formed. It turns out that Phobos isn’t exactly a large moon; in fact, at just under 14 miles across, it has a very weak gravitational pull, and this means it’s really easy for objects to slam into Phobos and bounce up to become airborne again. When it managed to escape Phobos’ gravitational cling, it eventually gets re-captured by the moon’s gravity as the moon orbits the red planet. During this process, the object hits the moon in new places, which could be responsible for this strange chain of craters. "A lot of stuff gets kicked up, floats for a couple of orbits, and then gets recollected and falls back in a linear chain before it has a chance to be pulled apart and disassociated by Mars' gravity," Nayak said. "The controlling factor is where the impact occurs, and that determines where the debris falls back." The computer models the researchers created based off of what we know about the moon’s strange qualities seem to match the actual chain of craters on the moon’s surface, suggesting that the researchers may have a solid theory. They also concluded that because Phobos is the closest-orbiting satellite in the solar system, it may be the only place in the solar system that has the characteristics for these kinds of things to happen the way they do. Source: Phys.org