space

BBC – Science & Nature Programmes – Hawking   

Link

Hawking stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the young Stephen Hawking who, as a bright and ambitious 21-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University, is diagnosed with the debilitating motor neurone disease and given two years to live. Against the odds, he goes on to achieve scientific success and worldwide acclaim, in particular with his best-selling book A Brief History Of Time.

Note: We saw this on Father’s Day (at my dad’s request) and it was a really good movie. Benedict Cumberbatch does a great job of portraying Stephen Hawking who is one of the world’s most famous men of science. I think Hawking has some good things to say but as a man of faith I believe that God is responsible for creation, however I see there is some things about time and space that can be divinely created. I came away from this with a new respect for the contributions of Stephen Hawking.

BBC – Science & Nature Programmes – Hawking   

Advertisement
Image

pbsthisdayinhistory:

January 28, 1986: Space Shuttle Challenger Breaks Apart After Launch

Barely 70 seconds into its flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart on this day in 1986, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The disaster was caused by a faulty seal in one of the rockets on the shuttle. The tragedy led to a 32-month hiatus of the shuttle program.

Read President Ronald Reagan’s speech to the nation following the Challenger disaster.

Photo: The STS-51L crew, who were lost aboard the Challenger (NASA). Front row: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair. Back row: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

I was in high school when this happened. Space flight is a awesome adventure but has risk. These people are true heroes.

NASA Spacecraft Embarks on Historic Journey Into Interstellar Space – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Link

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun. New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars.

image

NASA Spacecraft Embarks on Historic Journey Into Interstellar Space – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Image

A NASA satellite the size of a bus will hit the Earth sometime this afternoon – and scientists have little to no idea where it will land. 

The latest projections last night were that the defunct NASA satellite would tumble to Earth from space sometime this afternoon, but because the satellite is free-falling, the space agency and the U.S. Air Force cannot make a precise prediction about when and where it will hit.

The 13,000-pound Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, was about 115 miles above Earth yesterday. It had been slowly falling back to the planet since it completed its mission in 2005.

Measuring 35 feet long and 15 feet in diameter, the satellite was launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery in September 1991 to study ozone and other chemicals in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Image

discoverynews:

Space Junk Problem Reaches Tipping Point

It’s bad news for all you aspiring space tourists out there. Soon, the only ticket into space may be of the suborbital variety and nothing more ambitious, like actually flying into orbit.

Earth is now surrounded by so much space junk that a leading expert on the issue has declared that we are at a “tipping point” — it may soon become too dangerous to venture into low-Earth orbit (LEO) through fear of having a manned spaceship punctured or a communications satellite trashed.

Ian O’Neill on the nightmare scenario of the Space Age.

Read more