Welcome, Haumea

The Solar System’s planetary roll call just got longer. From today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day:
One of the strangest objects in the outer Solar System was classified as a dwarf planet last week and given the name Haumea. This designation makes Haumea the fifth designated dwarf planet after Pluto, Ceres, Eris, and Makemake. Haumea’s smooth [...]

Mentos + Diet Coke + Zero G = Best. Experiment. Ever.

[from my GeekDad post]
Robert Woodhead, self-described Mad Overlord and all-around geek, has posted an amazing amount of detail from his recent experiment in seeing how the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction works in microgravity. It’s a modification of the now-standard geyser-producing demonstration, but with a twist: performing the trick on a Zero G flight and [...]

Showing off the awesome baby that is Luke

And showing off the friendship star quilt that Karen made for Luke, too!

Loretta Whitesides is just plain cool

[I'm going to start posting some of my GeekDad articles over here, so you'll know when new ones are available. Let me know if this is unnecessary duplication.]
I had the pleasure of meeting Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides at a SEDS UCSD talk the other day. It quickly became obvious that she’s one of Our People, and [...]

Google and Virgin Join Forces, Plan Mars Colony

The new endeavor, named Virgle, has been written up on the Google blog by Sir Richard Branson.
Radcliffs, get your rockets ready!

Explorer beat Sputnik?

It’s the fiftieth anniversary, give or take, of Sputnik and Explorer I. While the Russians might have beaten the U.S. into space, the U.S. apparently came in first place for science. Or at least according to this op-ed from the L.A. Times:
Fifty years ago tomorrow, the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer [...]

SpaceShipTwo is unveiled

I haven’t looked at details yet, but Virgin Galactic showed off models of their new spacecraft today according to a New York Times article:
Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first privately-financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, [...]

mirrors and moonbeams

Is anyone interested in a road trip to Arizona for some moonshine? No, not that kind of moonshine. I’m talking about moonlight reflected off a five-story mirror array in the desert near Tuscon.
A Tucson-based inventor and businessman Richard Chapin and his wife Monica are behind the giant device, which gathers up and focuses the light [...]

How the lunar module evolved

Just a note to brag that the November 2007 issue of the British Interplanetary Society’s magazine Spaceflight: The Magazine of Astronautics and Outer Space features an article called “Grumman’s ambitious spider” about how Grumman tried to modify the Lunar Module to give it more flexibility and utility. The authors of this interesting article (which features [...]

Google backs a $30 million Lunar X-Prize

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!  The X-Prize Foundation just launched a new competition, offering $20 million to the first team to send a rover to the moon and send back high-definition photos. From the Beeb:
To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform a series of tasks such as shoot video [...]