Happiness, I watched NASA launch Ares I-X via the net on the BBC site.  It was magical, the Tallest rocket ever built. I remeber seing the inards of this might vehicle on a TV program about future NASA projects. This is a new type of rocket and its believed that it might be instrumental in Future Moon missions or even the Trip to Mars which does appear to be the target.

Although the launch was successful, this test flight could well be its last flight. But , I am optimistic. People will find a way , God willing, to continue the adventure into space. Ares I-X might be a footnote, but what a glorious one she is. Bravo

So Guy Laliberte is back on Earth after visiting the International Space Station(ISS) Via the Russian Soyuz TMA-14 space craft.

He was in Space for about 11 days and its thought that the trip cost him a considerable amount of money. Happily for him, the overall financial cost to him probably hasn't serious dented his Billion Dollar Fortune.

When the first Space tourist went up, There was quite a lot of commentary in the Newspapers about how in appropriate it was to allow visitors at the ISS.  How things have changed, with all the problems the USA has launching Shuttles, the ISS survival probably now depends heavily on the Russian Soyez flights.  Soyuz probably benefits a lot from the money paid over by the space tourists.

NASA deliberately crashed a space vehicle into the Moon a few hours ago and did not get what they where expecting. It was a space craft called LCROSS. Apparently, crashing the craft into the moon at 5600 mph should have raised a massive plume of dust which should have remained visible for a long time in the moons airless low gravity environment. In theory, the scientists back at NASA would then have been able to analyse the plume for its content and search for signs of water. It did not work out, there is no visible dust cloud,  the early readings don't support a dust cloud either. But they're still checking.

Anyway, I have a wild theory for anyone who's interested. Perhaps the Crater they targeted did contain water, a lot more than they imagined, and that this water has turn ed Crater surface into a gelatinous bog They the ejecta from the crash would have been heavier than expected and settled back down rapidly, ego , no dust cloud.

So Saturn has a previously unknown ring of debris circling it at a distanse of About  eight million miles from the Planet.  However, its very thin and some believe that all the material in this ring would just fill in a Crate on the Moon Phoebe.

For me, One of the things this really illustrates is the number of Navigational hazards in our Solar System. A saterllite or a manned Space craft travelling unknowingly into  this ring of dust could suffer heavy damage thanks to the relative velocities of the space craft and the debris.

Well, it looks like the Hubble telescopes new bits are working well as the latest pictures stream out of the fabulous device. Now the folk in charge of controlling the space bourne telescope are busy bring all the systems back on line. So far the new pictures are stunning.

Hubble telescope official site

We recently found out about the Kepler Mission which launched at 0349GMT which is 2249EST on 7 March, from Cape Canaveral.  The really exciting  thing about this mission is that its looking for Rocky planets orbiting their star within what is known as the habitable zone of their Star. In short, these are planets that might be inhabitable.

Hundreds of planets have already been discovered outside the solar system, but they have been very un earth like. They have been Gas giants or Ice giants sometimes whizzing around their star at massive velocities. Its unlikely that life as we know it could easily exist on such planets. Then again who knows. However, when devoting immense resources to finding livable planets or extra terrestrial life, the searchers must concentrate their search on the avenues that offer them the highest probability of success. In essense they must look for planets that are as similar to Earth as possible.

For more definitive information about Kepler , visit  The kepler mission homepage .

So the question is , is the universe empty off life except on Planet Earth ?  The only answer I would venture is that its improbable that life exists only on Earth, yet its not impossible. However, the sheer numbers suggest that the chances of one intelligent life form meeting another intelligent life form are very low indeed, yet once again , not impossible.

In this category, we shall be considering the various possibilities regarding Alien lifeforms and looking at the current technologies for finding them.

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Most people have heard about NASA at some stage in their life and it would be easy to think that NASA is all there is to space travel on this planet. NASA is a great pioneer of space travel and in this category we will be researching available information about NASA and  other space industry organisations such as ESA and the Russian space organisations.

The depiction of space travel is not what started my interest in Space travel. It was the Apollo 14 Moon landing of 1971 that ignited a passion for space travel. I had exactly no understanding of what was going on at the time, but recollect being shown the moon and told that the Chaps I had just watched on TV where there on the Moon. Incredible.

Science fiction though has help expand on that interest and entertained me enomously over the years. Plus the imagination poured into a lot of these Sci fi works is immense and its generally accepted that ideas from sci fi have made it onto the drawing board and in to the machine shop, and then into space.

In this category we shall be looking at what we consider to be the best , the most ordinary, and the worst Sci fi out there.

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For me the most exiting development in recent times has been the success of Burt Rutan's Space ship one in wining the Ansari X-prize.  In this category we shall be looking at as many space vehicles as we can . Space ship ones re entry system is a particular high light though one wonders how such a system could be made to work for a space vehicle moving at orbital speeds.