See you on Mars!
We interviewed Mitch Schulte, Mars Exploration Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC and NZ Astrobiology Network’s official adviser about what it is like to work on Mars.
We interviewed Mitch Schulte, Mars Exploration Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC and NZ Astrobiology Network’s official adviser about what it is like to work on Mars.
It would be ironic to discover life on Venus before we found out about it on Mars but scientists insist for now that is “just phosphine”.
This is a fly around of the area of Mars that the Perseverance rover will operate in.
The Brashear Telescope is a masterpiece of the Victorian age technology. It stands 9 m tall with a refracting lens of 18 inches (45.72 cm)
The Starship/Super Heavy combination that is the new name for SpaceX’s BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is taking shape in Texas with construction of a test vehicle known as Starhopper.
This podcast has been recorded by us here from New Zealand for Space Place at Carter Observatory and the Jodcast, for the December night sky
Riding on Elon Musk’s muscle power earthlings are preparing to invade the Moon again. There they will find that some of its craters have been renamed to honour the Apollo 8 mission, the first to orbit our natural satellite 50 years ago. Venus is hailed by the Parker Solar probe that swings by it, Jupiter’s Moon Europa has 15 meters ice spikes on the surface and Saturn’s rings are not just water nor all the lost airline luggage. Mars has to resign to the idea that earthlings have figured out how to grow plants on it. Not even perchlorates can stop them. And last but not least, New Horizons is unstoppable going towards Ultima Thule.
This week, the European Space Agency announced that radar data collected by ESA’s Mars Express point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars. There is a long way between finding liquid brine pools on Mars and finding life. However, there might be a similar place on Earth, the Blood Falls in Antarctica that originate from a hypersaline brine groundwater environment that supports an anaerobic microbial ecosystem sustained by chemical energy. Professor Ian Hawes from Waikato University explains the importance of the discovery from Mars.
When observing the planets in astronomy it can be quite surprising to see the different sizes that appear in the eyepiece and how this can change over time.
Now that your telescope is all ready, take it outside and start viewing the night sky.
Mars is getting closer this year and will at it’s closest by the end of July. But don’t worry it’ll still be about 58 million kilometres away.
Using a telescope for the first time is not the easiest thing to do, expectations need to be realistic.
The 2018 Space and Science Festival, held at Onslow College in Wellington was fantastic, with great talks from NASA and Rocket Lab and plenty of interesting displays.
This short video has a look at the current missions that are either on Mars or whizzing around it.
SpaceX is well advanced in it’s plans to build a huge rocket to take humans to Mars and they plan to do this by 2024. This article has a closer look at the Big Falcon Rocket to see what’s so special about it.
With all the talk of going back to the moon, we thought it’d be good to recap on who is doing what in the coming years about returning to the Moon.
Where are the satellites? We hear a lot about GPS, Hubble, the ISS and a load of other satellites, but not often where they are or much about how they got there, or how they stay there.
A great reason to look up at the night sky is that you might see a supernova like the the one that Albert Jones spotted in 1987.
Milky-Way.Kiwi is a social enterprise for quality and affordable access to the night sky run by professional space science communicators. We provide educational services for teachers and schools – Spaceward Bound NZ, stargazing and astronomy and space courses and programmes for the public – Star Safari and we write about space and astronomy with a New Zealand perspective.
At Star Safari, everyone 15 and younger is FREE because we believe that young people should not pay for inspiration.
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