Donald Noble's Website

There seems to be a flurry of astronomical events occurring at the moment, some really interesting scientific missions, to further explore the universe around us. The space race may have ended, but there is certainly still activity out there.

Yesterday’s dramatic end to the European Space Agency SMART-1 mission to monitor the Moon’s surface came when (as planned) it crashed into the lunar surface, throwing up material to be analysed from earth based telescopes… More at the ESA website.

NASA, meanwhile, is hoping to launch a pair of satellites to monitor the beautiful, and amazingly complex outer atmosphere of the Sun, in all its stereoscopic (3D) beauty. Hopefully this will be launched some time in October. NASA STEREO mission page

And the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have survived a second midwinter and should hopefully continue on for some time, gathering more valuable information.

Also, the International Space is now almost halfway through construction, although there is still a huge amount of work to be done before the Shuttle is retired. Hopefully it can be finished before then, or if not, another craft designed to finish this outpost in the sky.

And the future is looking bright, with work progressing (albeit slowly) towards the fabled space elevator, including the Elevator 2010 competition, which is similar to the recently claimed X-prize, although perhaps even more of a challenge.

Some interesting times ahead, as we find out more about this vast space we live in… (pun intended :p)

This entry was posted on Sunday 3rd September 2006 in Science and tagged mars, moon, Science, space, space_elevator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.