"We also consider several other models that seek to explain the Fermi Paradox, most notably percolation theory and two societal-collapse theories. In the former case, we find that it imposes unnatural assumptions which likely render it unrealistic. In the latter case, we present a new theory of interstellar transportation bandwidth which calls into question the validity of societal-collapse theories."

""I need money to go to the moon," Bolden said."

"The results are "quite strange," Oppenheimer said. "These warm, red planets are unlike any other known object in our universe. All four planets have different spectra, and all four are peculiar. The theorists have a lot of work to do now.""

"Research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has revealed key features in proteins needed for life to function on Mars and other extreme environments."

"They say the stones contain fossilised biological structures fused into the rock matrix and that their tests clearly rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination. "

"Astronomers have their fingers crossed that within the haul of data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, which has already detected nearly three thousand possible exoplanets, hide the signatures of the very first exomoons."

"Evidence exists that a large natural nuclear reactor formed and operated on Mars in the northern Mare Acidalium region of Mars"

"A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe"

"Even dying stars could host planets with life—and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade"

""Because these are some of the oldest rocks from the moon, the water is inferred to have been in the moon when it formed," Zhang said."

"“Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts,” said O’Banion. “The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”"

"In a 1963 paper, Dyson speculated on how an advanced civilization might use a binary star system made up of two white dwarfs. Send a spacecraft into the system for a close pass around one of the stars and, depending on the mass and orbital velocity of the stars, it is thrown out of the binary system at velocities as high as 3000 kilometers per second. But Dyson took the idea even further. His paper, which appeared as a chapter in a book called Interstellar Communication (New York: Benjamin Press, 1963), described not just white dwarfs but the creation of a binary neutron star system as an engineered launch platform..."

"Kopeikin's research suggests that the photons move faster than expected from the Newtonian theory thus causing the appearance of deceleration, though the craft were actually traveling at the correct speed predicted by the theory."

"Astrobotic Technology Inc. has completed assembly of a full-size prototype of Polaris, a solar-powered robot that will search for potentially rich deposits of water ice at the moon's poles. The first of its kind, Polaris can accommodate a drill to bore one meter into the lunar surface and can operate in a lunar regions characterized by dark, long shadows and a sun that hugs the horizon."

". Rather than being planets much like the Earth but simply more massive — worlds characterized by thick atmospheres, plate tectonics, volcanic activity and magnetic fields — they may differ in fundamental ways. With internal pressures tens of times higher than those found in Earth’s interior, large viscosities and melting temperatures could have adverse consequences on the planet’s habitability."

PHOTON SIEVE

A supernova may have actually been the mysterious "Red Crucifix" in the sky that is cited in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle for the year 774. New correspondence between a university student and Nature carries interesting observations that astronomers could be looking at a previously unrecognized supernova.

@Exoplanetology: New class of stars called Y Dwarfs -- very cool Brown dwarfs http://t.co/WkjWRHYW http://twitter.com/Exoplanetology/status/211905042633064449

"When the Alcubierre-driven ship decelerates from superluminal speed, the particles its bubble has gathered are released in energetic outbursts. In the case of forward-facing particles the outburst can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of the ship."

"XCOR Aerospace is a private California-based company that has developed the Lynx, a reusable launch vehicle that has suborbital flight capabilities. Low-speed test flights are expected to commence later this year, with incremental testing to take place over the following months."

"The J-2X engine is the first new liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine developed in 40 years that will be rated to carry humans into space. "

"Most Profitable: 253 Mathilde, a 52.8 km-diameter C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid that has an estimated value of over $100 trillion and estimated profit of $9.53 trillion (USD) "

"SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace have announced a new marketing alliance for SpaceX transportation to Bigelow private space stations. SpaceX will take customers, both private and governmental, to orbit using its Dragon reusable space capsule; Bigelow will host them using its BA330 inflatable space habitats, which will presumably be launched on a larger rocket.  No announcement was made concerning who would carry the stations themselves to orbit."

"Algol, aka the Demon Star, is actually a binary star in the Perseus constellation, and has been the subject of speculation for hundreds of years. Now a group of Finnish researchers propose that the peculiar behavior of Algol was first noted by the Egyptians some 3200 years ago."

"Winglee and his students continue research in his Johnson Hall laboratory on the possibility of placing mag-beam units in orbit around Earth and around a planet such as Mars that humans might want to explore. With a unit on each end – one to give a spacecraft a high-velocity push on its journey and the other to slow it at its destination – a mission to Mars could be accomplished in as little as 90 days, rather than the 2.5 years it would take with conventional means."

Since the launch involved a classified cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office, no details were immediately available about whether it was boosted to its intended orbit.

"It comes from the region surrounding the galactic centre and looks like a form of energy called synchrotron emission"

" Remote Sensing is a technology for sampling electromagnetic radiation comprising a signal emanating from its source target that is used to acquire and interpret non-contiguous geospatial data from which to extract information about features, objects, and classes on the Earth's land surface, oceans, and atmosphere (and, where applicable, on the exteriors of other bodies in the Solar System, or, in the broadest framework, celestial bodies such as stars and galaxies)."

"With a weight that rivals a baby elephant, a meteorite that fell from space some 30,000 years ago is likely Britain’s largest space rock. And after much sleuthing, researchers think they know where it came from and how it survived so long without weathering away."

The American space agency looks set to pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency... budget woes..."

"Highly-tilted worlds would have extreme seasons, subjecting life to alternating periods of scorching and subzero temperatures. This could make the development of all but hardiest, simplest creatures a long shot."

"Have you ever you looked up at the bright, cavernous Aristarchus Crater on the Moon through a telescope or binoculars and wondered what it would be like to stand on the rim and peer inside? Spectacular new views from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is almost as good as being there, and a new video lets you “rappel” down and take a closer look at the west side of the crater walls."

"When NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around giant asteroid Vesta in July, scientists fully expected the probe to reveal some surprising sights. But no one expected a 13-mile high mountain, two and a half times higher than Mount Everest, to be one of them."

"planetary ecosynthesis" - nice term. Also, I believe the answer is Yes.

COMET HARPOON GUN

Images taken from orbit reveal thousands of peculiar depressions at a variety of longitudes and latitudes, ranging in size from 60 feet to over a mile across and 60 to 120 feet deep. No one knows how they got there.

Raw, unprocessed images from the successful Oct. 19 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft provide new views of the moon and the icy jets that burst from its southern polar region.

A new image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a mountain three times as high as Mt. Everest, amidst the topography in the south polar region of the giant asteroid Vesta.

""Everything in aerospace always takes longer that you originally think," he said."

"Global and high resolution mapping of Enceladus confirms that the weather forecast for Saturn's unique icy moon is set for ongoing snow flurries. The superfine ice crystals that coat Enceladus's surface would make perfect powder for skiing, according to Dr Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute"

"“Like all works in the Escape Vehicles series no.1 [1996] and no.2 [1997] are tinged with the melancholy of failure. "

"Extremely high levels of supersaturation were found on Mars, up to 10 times greater than those found on Earth. Clearly, there is much more water vapour in the upper Martian atmosphere than anyone ever imagined."

"A rocket carrying China's first space laboratory, Tiangong-1, has launched from the north of the country. Tiangong means "heavenly palace" in Chinese."

"The US company SpaceX is working on the first-ever reusable rocket to launch to space and back, with the goal of one day helping humans colonize Mars, founder Elon Musk said Thursday."

"A new study published on arXiv.org shows that, based on computer simulations, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may not have been the only gas giants in our solar system. According to David Nesvorny from Colorado’s Southwest Research Institute, our current solar system could never have happened without the existence of a fifth planet."

Astronomers say they have found a second planet outside our solar system which is the right distance from its star to potentially support life. But any possible inhabitants would have to have a taste for an environment that felt like a hot steam bath.

A blazar is a galaxy which, like a quasar, has an intensely bright central nucleus containing a supermassive black hole. In a blazar, however, the emitted light sometimes includes extremely high energy gamma rays, sometimes over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory can study.

Lineweaver and Egan propose that it is unlikely that any intelligent life could have evolved in the universe much earlier than now (give or take a couple of billion years) since you need to progressively cycle through the star formation and destruction of Population III, II and then I stars to fill the universe with sufficient ‘metals’ to allow planets with evolutionary ecosystems to develop.

in the shadow of Saturn

Alberto Fairуn, an astrobiologist who works for both the SETI Institute (the group using radio telescopes to listen for extraterrestrial life) and NASA’s Ames research center, along with colleagues, has published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, in which they describe ancient Mars as cold and wet with a large northern hemispheric ocean whose edges were lined with glaciers.

The distant region beyond Saturn is too cold for liquid water, a necessity for life as we know it. But new research indicates that rocky planets far from their parent star could generate enough heat to keep water flowing - if their atmospheres were made up primarily of hydrogen.

Russia on Tuesday grounded its workhorse Proton-M rockets after the latest in a string of launch mishaps put a prized telecommunications satellite into the wrong orbit.

Reanalyzing the problem using string theory techniques used in the past to analyze black holes reveals a range of wormhole diameter-to-energy ratios that appear stable.

The space lab, named “Tiangong” translates from Mandarin Chinese into English as “Heavenly Palace”.  Weighing just under 9 tons, the prototype module will orbit for two years. China will use the module to practice docking maneuvers and test orbital technologies during the module’s lifetime.

Plumes of chemicals will cost $96 million to clean up in the next 30 years, including $6 million this year.

"Once on the surface, the DREAMS (Dust characterisation, Risk assessment, and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface) scientific payload will function as an environmental station for the two to four days of the surface mission." TWO TO FOUR DAYS. How utterly fucking embarrassing. That's the best we'll have in 2016. A demonstration article that is intended to work for two to four days. I should have a fucking homestead on Mars by now.

"A new computer model of the solar system based on data from the Voyager space probe indicates that the edge of the solar system is not smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles."

"The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System." This is amazing. There's the germs of whole new aesthetics in here. (crossref: video glitch)

Copenhagen Suborbitals hopes to launch the world’s first amateur-built rocket for human space travel and have announced an upcoming launch window for their Tycho Brahe capsule.

AFTER THIRTY YEARS! "The Skylon, which is being developed at the Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines in the UK, is an unpiloted and reusable spacecraft that can launch into Low Earth Orbit after taking off from a conventional runway."

"The fourth of Europe's robot freighters, due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2013, has been named after Albert Einstein, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday."

"The Titan Mare Explorer, or TiME, would perform the first direct inspection of an ocean environment beyond Earth by landing in, and floating on, a large methane-ethane sea on the cloudy, complex moon."

"Oddities in the rotation of Saturn's largest moon Titan might add to growing evidence that it harbors an underground ocean, researchers suggest."

"From the fashionable worlds of Christian Dior and Playtex to the military-industrial complex working overtime on efforts to create a protective suit for U.S. exploration of the moon, and from early computerized analyses of urban management to an "android" history of the French court, all by way of long chapters on the experimental high-flyers and military theorists who collaborated to push human beings further and further above the weather—and eventually off the planet itself—de Monchaux's book shows the often shocking juxtapositions that give such rich texture and detail to the invention of the spacesuit: pressurized clothing for human survival in space."

"The biggest 3-D map of the distant universe ever made, using light from 14,000 quasars – supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies billions of light years away – has been constructed by scientists with the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey"

"The heliosheath is a very strange place, filled with a magnetic froth no spacecraft has ever encountered before, echoing with low-frequency radio bursts heard only in the outer reaches of the solar system, so far from home that the sun is a mere pinprick of light..."

"A handful of companies competing to make the spaceship to replace the iconic US shuttle said Thursday they are racing to shrink what will be a long gap in flying Americans into space aboard US craft."