Justin Bieber to Be Launched Into Space

So if you ever wanted a space age shot of adrenalin to the collective veins of teenage girls across globe, the poppy buzz is about to begin — 19-year-old Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber has bought a (return) ticket into suborbital space with Virgin Galactic. Read more…

Top 10 Weirdest Mars Illusions and Pareidolia

More pareidolia! We have Mars rats, faces, elephants and trees (plus a lot more). Which is your favorite?

Mars Explorers Face Huge Radiation Problem

A radiation sensor inside NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows that even under the best-case scenario and behind shielding currently being designed for NASA’s new deep-space capsule, future travelers will face a huge amount of radiation.

Eek!

Hubble’s Best Ever View of a Giant Cosmic… Doughnut?

Doughnut or Eye of Sauron?

3-D Printed Pizza to Feed Mars Colonists?

Well, the prototype 3-D pizza printer won’t actually feed the colonists — nice idea though — but the technique to print food has attracted a $125,000 NASA grant for a mechanical engineer to further develop his idea. Could it feed astronauts and the future Earth? Possibly.

UK to Send First Astronaut to Space Station

Introducing Major Tim!

Into Reality: Top Star Trek Warp Speed Concepts

J.J. Abrams’ second Star Trek outing “Into Darkness” will hit movie screens this week, no doubt packed with excitement, explosions, mind-melding Vulcans and phasers set to stun. But there will also be the USS Enterprise traveling faster than the speed of light, carving up the vast expanses of interstellar space as if it was a short jaunt to the shops.

Over the years, warping spacetime has become more than a sci-fi notion, however. Star Trek may have popularized the mode of space transportation with Captain Kirk at the helm in the 1960s original series, but today, there are some serious efforts underway to establish whether spacetime can be warped in a useful way. Could warpships really be the future of zippy space travel? Or should the very notion of warp speed be resigned to the darkness of interstellar space? Read more

Sun Unleashes THREE Record X-Class Flares

The weekend ended with the biggest solar flare of the year — an X-class flare measuring X1.7. X-class flares are the most energetic type of flare, but an X1.7 is at the lower end of that scale. Obviously disappointed by its 2013 personal best, the sun let rip with not one, but TWO more X-class flares within 24 hours, each bigger than the last.

The X1.7 erupted at 9:17 p.m. EST (Sunday), and then a X2.8 followed-up at 11:09 a.m. EST (Monday). Then, the biggest flare completed the hat-trick at 8:17 p.m. EST with a new 2013 record of X3.2. The largest flare of the day is nearly 3 times more energetic than the first X1.7 flare.

Space Station Crew Prepare for Emergency Spacewalk

After the discovery of a leak of ammonia coolant supplying one of the International Space Station solar arrays on Thursday, NASA managers have decided to plan for an unscheduled spacewalk on Saturday to repair the problem. The final decision about whether to go ahead with the extravehicular activity will be made late on Friday. Read more.

NASA has also released a video showing the ammonia flakes drifting into space.