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Will humanity almost inevitably evolve into space colonizers?
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Space Law
Space law is an area of the law that encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. International lawyers have been unable to agree on a uniform definition of the term “outer space”, although most lawyers agree that outer space generally begins at the lowest altitude above sea level at which objects can…
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Pricetag on Naming Mars Craters
Recently initiatives that capitalise on the public’s interest in space and astronomy have proliferated, some putting a price tag on naming space objects and their features, such as Mars craters. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) would like to emphasise that such initiatives go against the spirit of free and equal access to space, as well…
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Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft
See: NASA Ames LADEE Mission: NASA Briefing Previews Lunar Mission NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, spacecraft has completed the check-out phase of its mission and has begun science operations around the moon. All the science instruments on-board have been examined by the LADEE team and have been cleared to begin collecting…
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Space policy of the Barack Obama administration
The space policy of the Barack Obama administration was announced by U.S. President Barack Obama on April 15, 2010, at a major space policy speech at Kennedy Space Center.[1] He committed to increasing NASA funding by $6 billion over five years and completing the design of a new heavy-lift launch vehicle by 2015 and to…
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Artemis
Illustration of Artemis-P1 liberations orbits. Credit: NASA/Goddard ARTEMIS-P1 is the first spacecraft to navigate to and perform stationkeeping operations around the Earth-Moon L1 and L2 Lagrangian points. There are five Lagrangian points associated with the Earth-Moon system. The two points nearest the moon are of great interest for lunar exploration. These points are called L1…
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Moon Pictures
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ LPOD Photo Gallery Motivation During the late 1800s and well into the 1900s it seemed that every book that described the craters, mountains and other features of Earth’s moon was titled The Moon. In my mind this came to stand for an encyclopedia-like series of descriptions of features on the lunar surface. In general,…
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Grail At the Moon
Grail Recovery and Interior Labratory NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A spacecraft successfully completed its planned main engine burn at 2 p.m. PST (5 p.m. EST) today. As of 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST), GRAIL-A is in a 56-mile (90-kilometer) by 5,197-mile (8,363-kilometer) orbit around the moon that takes approximately 11.5 hours to…
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Sphere and Sound Waves
Don demonstrates water oscillations on a speaker in microgravity, and ZZ Top rocks the boat 250 miles above Earth.Science off the Sphere: Space Soundwaves So of course I might wonder about cymatics in space. It ‘s more the idea that you could further experiment with the environment with which life on the space station may…
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Grail: Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory
GRAIL Spacecraft Logo NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft logo is emblazoned on the first stage of a United Launch Alliance Delta II launch vehicle, now secured in the gantry at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 17B. Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann Mission Overview The GRAIL mission will place two…
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LRO’s Crater Science Investigations
