Yesterday, my mother Angela unexpectedly passed away and we are all very, very sad and miss her terribly. I’ve made another short post over on the photography blog and I’ll say a bit more about my wonderful mother when I’ve recovered from this sudden event. I’d like to thank everyone who already sent me condolences and great words of hope. I’m going to be okay and will continue with everything soon, I may just be a little bit more quiet than usual because I have lots to do in the next days. Angela will stay alive through me and my memories of her and our whole family will never forget her.
This week’s round of space and science news is again a collection of articles posted in my Space & Astronomy Collection on Google+ and in the WSH Crew Community, plus a couple of additional ones that caught my attention. Does SpaceX take the headlines for a fourth week in a row? There were some news from the Dragon splashdown and the booster arrival, but I think Kepler wins this week with the announcement of over one thousand newly confirmed exoplanets and even nine in the habitable zone of their stars. A lot of other things have, of course, happened, but overall it has been somewhat quiet this week – except for a triple-feature hangout Friday! Check the playlists on our WSH Crew Website, there are two new episodes of Astronomy Cast and a great Weekly Space Hangout to watch!
Continue reading »
This week’s round of space and science news is again a collection of articles posted in my Space & Astronomy Collection on Google+ and in the WSH Crew Community, plus a couple of additional ones that caught my attention. For the third week in a row, SpaceX takes the headlines, this time with another successful satellite launch and an even more difficult booster landing on sea. But that was not all SpaceX was up to this week, because there was also a surprising new price chart, superhero spacesuits and some speculation about the Falcon Heavy, so the first four headlines belong to them. Of course there were some other interesting news this week too, so here’s my very personal and subjective selection.
Continue reading »
This week’s round of space and science news is again a collection of articles posted in my Space & Astronomy Collection on Google+ and in the WSH Crew Community, plus a couple of additional ones that caught my attention. This week, SpaceX again takes the top spot with the surprisde announcement of an uncrewed Mars mission in just two years! Having shaken up the rocket launch business with their successful landing of the Falcon 9 booster wasn’t enough – now Elon Musk has chosen Mars as a new target, which is, of course, not really a big surprise given his occasional previous remarks about the red planet. Also in the news were the first launch from Russia’s new Vostochny spaceport, lots of politics mainly about the RD-180 rocket engine, a new moon for a dwarf planet and much more. As usual, this is just a highly subjective selection of the space news of this week, but I’ve tried to include everything noteworthy.
Continue reading »