China placed a space lab Tiangong-1 int orbit last September 2011, were you paying attention?
It has been on orbit and undergoing checkout operations. This August they have announced that they are going to place astronauts on board.  Launch will be on a Long March 2F rocket, the Xinhua news agency reported Friday. For those counting the number of countries that can independently launch astronauts to their own countries lab is one…China. It appears that great strides are being made by them and you only have to look at the results of their program to see the progress.
See where Tiangong-1 is …

Recent Video from SDO will make earthbound tornado chasers envious.
SDO recently captured some astounding videos of tornados on the surface of the sun.  These are caused by the plasma and it’s interaction with the magnetic fields on the surface of the sun. You can see an obvious spin and a tornado like shape and even what looks like a funnels.
 
The video taken over a 30 hour period on February 7-8. 2012 shows a least 3 tornados.Until SDO was launched videos like this were not possible. The frames are taken 4 minutes apart. The science is great….but the video is just …

Tiny cube satellites or cubesats are making there way into orbit. The image above is typical of cubesats that are built with small payloads by colleges, private industry and even radio clubs. These small satellites usually are launched as a secondary payload with another larger satellite. This month NASA selected 33 small satellites to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets planned to launch in 2013 and 2014.
 
NASA has also announced a continuation of an opportunity for small satellite payloads to fly on rockets planned to launch in 2012, 2013 and 2014. These CubeSats could be auxiliary cargo on previously planned …

Fifty years ago Americas first astronaut went into space.  On Feb. 20, 1962 at 9:47 am EST, Glenn launched from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 14 to become the first American to orbit the Earth. The capsule is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, Milestones of Flight gallery.
 

Before joining NASA, Glenn already had a distinguished career as a pilot, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross, Navy Unit Commendation for service in Korea, the World War II Victory Medal, the Navy’s Astronaut Wings, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, among others.
Glenn rejoined NASA in 1998 as a member …

All-sky image of molecular gas and three molecular cloud complexes seen by Planck
This all-sky image shows the distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), a molecule used by astronomers to trace molecular clouds across the sky, as seen by Planck.
Molecular clouds, the dense and compact regions throughout the Milky Way where gas and dust clump together, represent one of the sources of foreground emission seen by Planck. The vast majority of gas in these clouds consists of molecular hydrogen, and it is in these cold regions that stars are born. Since cold molecular hydrogen does not easily radiate, astronomers trace these cosmic …

NASA Budget to be proposed Monday
On Capitol Hill Feb. 13, President Obama will ask for a $17.7 billion NASA’s 2013 budget sources said Friday. The proposal represents only a slight reduction from the $17.8 billion Congress had previously approved for 2012. Compared to the $18.7 billion Obama proposed for 2013 in the five-year budget he sent to Congress this time last year, it is a 5 percent cut.

In the president’s proposal, the planetary science areas would shoulder a significant portion of the budget cuts and would drop from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, a 20 percent reduction. The James Webb …

 This is an artist’s concept of that planet, HAT-P-7b. It is a “hot Jupiter” class planet orbiting a star that is much hotter than our sun. Hubble Space Telescope’smillionth science observation was trained on this planet to look for the presence of water vapor and to study the planet’s atmospheric structure via spectroscopy. (Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Bacon, STScI)

Last Summer Hubble took it’s one Millionth Observation
Source NASA -NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4 2011, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for …

The ambitious Russian Mars probe which was supposed to place a lander on Phobos was doomed by a software glitch say Russian officials. “a programming error which led to a simultaneous reboot of two working channels of an onboard computer,” according to RIA Novosti. With both of the main spacecraft computers down the doomed probe basically lost it’s mind. Even with that after the reboot the probe’s design still should have allow communication to be re-established. All satellites are normally designed to survive a computer reboot and will come back in a safe mode waiting for commands from the ground. …

Source NASA – A new study provides a possible explanation of mysterious X-ray flares detected by the Chandra K-ray Observatory for several years in the region of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. The study suggests a cloud around Sgr A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, which contains hundreds of trillions of asteroids and comets that have been stripped from their parent stars.

The flares occur when asteroids of six miles or larger in radius are consumed by the black hole. An asteroid that undergoes a close encounter with another object, such as a star …

 
MRO HiRISE has taken 21,000 images in its life, recent images show older landers.
(NASA) The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently captured images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment – HiRISE instrument, taken on Jan. 26, 2012. This picture NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander  after that spacecraft’s second Martian arctic winter. Phoenix exceeded its planned mission life in 2008, ending its work as solar energy waned during approach of its first Mars winter.
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also recorded a pictures on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing …