 "Gravity is a constant for all organisms on Earth. It acts on every aspect of our physiology, behavior and development – no matter what you are, you evolved in an environment where gravity roots us firmly to the ground.
But what happens if you’re removed from that familiar environment and placed into a situation outside your evolutionary experience? That’s exactly the question we ask every day of the plants we grow in our laboratory. They start out here in our earthbound lab, but they’re on their way to outer space. What could be a more novel environment for a plant than the zero-gravity conditions of spaceflight?..." Read more @ The Conversation  We wonder which of our students will discover bodies around our solar system and beyond!
----- "On the 23rd and 24th of January, 1930, a young astronomer working in Flagstaff, Arizona, scanned a small patch of the night sky. He was taking pictures of star positions, looking for anomalies that would signal movement somewhere at the edge of the solar system. He took the pictures then set them aside, not realizing that he’d found exactly what he was looking for..." Read more @ io9  "OneWeb has closed a $500 million funding round to build a satellite system that it says will provide affordable broadband services across the globe.The company has attracted investment from Airbus, Bharti Enterprises, Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, Virgin Group and others. It will use the funds to develop key technologies required to enable internet access for undeveloped locations.
The announcement comes just days after..." Read more @ TNW  "This image captured by Sentinel-1A’s radar on 1 April 2015 shows a central region of California in the US. The San Andreas Fault – the border between two tectonic plates – is visible as a somewhat straight line running from the upper-left corner of the image to the bottom centre. The Pacific Plate to the west is moving in a northwest direction, while the North American plate to the east is shifting southeast. This horizontal scraping is happening at up to about 5 cm a year in some parts of the fault..." Read on @ ESA  "Over the past week, ESA's Integral satellite has been observing an exceptional outburst of high-energy light produced by a black hole that is devouring material from its stellar companion.
X-rays and gamma rays point to some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe, such as stellar explosions, powerful outbursts and black holes feasting on their surroundings. In contrast to the peaceful view of the night sky we see with our eyes, the high-energy sky is a dynamic light show, from flickering sources that change their brightness dramatically in a few minutes to others that vary on timescales spanning years or even decades. On 15 June 2015, a long-time acquaintance of X-ray and gamma ray astronomers made..." Read more @ ESA  Although space policy and international affairs is not a commonly talked about majors in K-12, it will be important for our students and teachers to build a greater awareness towards space topics.
----- "Henry Hertzfeld, a professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, has taught a space law course for 11 years (before that, his background was in economics—the regular Earth kind). Even though the laws that govern space were drawn up back in the 1960s and 1970s, they’re still very good, he says. “The whole idea is freedom of access and using space for..." Read on @ Gizmodo "Ready to explore Pluto? NASA’s New Horizons - the fastest spacecraft ever created - will speed past Pluto on July 14, 2015, beaming back high resolution photos (and invaluable data) of the dwarf planet’s surface for the first time in human history. "
From YouTube/National Space Society |
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