HackingTheUniverse

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University of Alabama graduate students ponder building necessary infrastructure for space exploration. There are two missing pieces in their thinking: Instead of building outposts on craggy, randomly shaped rocks, it makes more sense to fabricate whatever you want (a space habitat) and spin it to create internal gravity-like force. With very cheap energy, plentiful building [...]

A new theory suggests that an asteroid belt, positioned at just the right place in a planetary system, can help promote the development of life. In order for life as we know it to evolve, a planet must have some water and the organic, carbon based building blocks that form the needed chemical stew. There [...]

This amazing animation shows how many asteroids have been discovered across a time span of 1980-2012. Here are some rounded numbers that show the progression of discovery over the years: 1980 – 009,000 1990 – 015,000 2000 – 100,000 2010 – 525,000 2012 – 580,000 Watch the video to see how it happened. Asteroid Discovery [...]

Someday soon, humans will begin a mass emigration to the asteroid belt. The drivers for this diaspora will not be the noble quest for the exploration of space, or the expansion and survival of humanity, but rather the simple desire for more freedom. In space, freedom will reach new levels, with territory for living being [...]

Some asteroids that share the orbit of a larger body, such as a planet, without interfering with it, are known as “Trojans”. Lagrange points are orbital positions found near two objects, that allow a third object to remain in a balanced and stable position. There are two clusters of asteroids that have accumulated near Lagrange [...]

On Sunday, August 1, 2010, the side of the Sun facing the Earth erupted with a “coronal mass ejection” and a lot of other activity. This is a when a huge bubble of gas throws a large blob of plasma out into space and in this case it’s streaming toward Earth at a very high [...]

Building Planets – [nasa.gov] A beautiful artistic illustration of an asteroid belt (link above) shows a common misconception of asteroid spacing that is prevalent in both science fiction and the public mind. We love to watch Hans Solo or some other pilot skilfully guide a spaceship through the clutter of an asteroid field. But in [...]

NASA has been developing a robotic device that can function as an avatar for an astronaut, offering extravehicular telerobotic and telepresence capability. The astronaut will be able to operate the robot from inside the space station and perform “human-like” tasks using the robots hands and arms and sensors. The robonaut will be able to perform [...]

Astronomers have detected the spectrum signature of ice on an asteroid called 24 Themis in the main belt. They believe the thin coating of frost on the 200 kilometer wide rock is constantly being evaporated by the Sun and then replenished from an interior supply deep inside the rock. Astronomers Find Water On Asteroid’s Surface [...]

Dawn is a space probe that was launched in Sept of 2007 and has been thrusting it’s way toward the asteroid belt since then. It reached the edge of the main belt last November and now is poised to do some close up investigating of some of the larger asteroids. Dawn Sailing Smoothly Through The [...]