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Orbiter reaches Mars, but lander is lost

An artist’s conception show the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter releasing the Schiaparelli lander for its descent to Mars. (Credit: D. Ducros / ESA)

For the first time in 13 years, the European Space Agency has put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars – and has sent a piggyback lander to an unknown fate on the Red Planet’s surface.

Flight controllers at ESA’s operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, cheered the news that the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was back in contact after rounding Mars today. The last time an ESA orbiter arrived at the Red Planet was back in 2003, with Mars Express.

“We have two satellites around Mars,” flight director Michel Denis declared.

Denis and the rest of his team were still waiting to hear from the Schiaparelli lander, which was launched along with the orbiter in March, and was released on Oct. 16 for its descent.

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Book recounts how billionaires started a space race

Seattle billionaire Paul Allen (center) shakes the hand of SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie in 2004 with rocket plane designer Burt Rutan by his side. (Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC)

Commercial spaceflight seems to be hitting its stride right about now, thanks in part to the launch programs funded by billionaires such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos and Vulcan Aerospace’s Paul Allen.

But the spark for that entrepreneurial space was lit two decades ago, and a newly published book reveals how Musk, Bezos and Allen were striking some the matches way back when.

“How to Make a Spaceship,” written by Julian Guthrie, focuses on XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis and his years-long quest to create a $10 million competition for private-sector spaceflight.

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China sends two spacefliers to orbital lab

A Chinese Long March 2F rocket rises from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, sending the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft with two Chinese spacefliers into orbit. (Credit: CCTV)

Two Chinese astronauts are on their way to an orbiting laboratory for a monthlong mission aimed at preparing the way for a full-fledged Chinese space station.

Veteran military pilots Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong lifted off in the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft atop a Long March 2F rocket at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 7:30 a.m. Beijing time Oct. 17 (4:30 p.m. PT Oct. 16). Jing, a veteran of two earlier space missions, is the commander for what’s expected to be the longest-lasting of China’s six crewed spaceflights to date.

“It is any astronaut’s dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions,” The Associated Press quoted Jing as saying during a pre-launch briefing.

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Hubble boosts galaxy count by factor of 10

A deep-field image from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS, shows a scattering of distant galaxies. (Credit: NASA / ESA / GOODS Team / M. Giavialisco / UMass-Amherst)

It looks as if astronomers have been way, way off on their galaxy counts: A new analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that the observable universe holds at least 2 trillion galaxies, which is 10 times the previous estimate.

How could scientists be so far off? The key is that the early universe appears to have had lots of relatively small, faint galaxies. As they merged to form larger galaxies, the population density dwindled.

It took Hubble’s deep-field surveys to register the smaller galaxies that existed far back in time, and it took painstaking analysis to count up a sampling of those galaxies.

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Kymeta’s antennas wow Monaco’s yacht crowd

Kymeta’s flat-panel antennas have their day in the sun at the Monaco Yacht Show. (Credit: Kymeta)

Kymeta Corp., the flat-panel antenna company that’s backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has demonstrated the capabilities of its satellite broadband data transmission technology in front of a tough crowd: the rich and famous at the Monaco Yacht Show.

“This is really about us showing our first product in action,” said Nathan Kundtz, president and CEO of the venture headquartered in Redmond, Wash.

Kymeta makes stop-sign-sized antennas that take advantage of metamaterials to receive satellite signals without having to turn and focus on the spacecraft flying overhead.

During the week surrounding the show in Monaco show, which ran from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, Kymeta set up two of its antennas on the roof of the stylish Restaurant Virageto provide Wi-Fi access for the Superyacht Owner’s VIP Lounge.

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Hail, Asgardia! Scientist aims to create space nation

A stylized graphic shows Asgardia’s satellite in space. (Credit: Asgardia.space)

A Russian scientist and businessman today unveiled a social-media-savvy plan to create the first-ever nation in space, named Asgardia. But many of the details of the plan, including how Asgardia’s first satellite will be launched, haven’t yet been pinned down.

The mastermind behind Asgardia, which takes its name from the city of the skies in Norse mythology, is Igor Ashurbeyli. Five years ago, he left his position as the CEO of one of Russia’s top defense contractors, Almaz-Antey, and turned his attention to Socium Holding, a company he founded in 1988.

Ashurbeyli is also the founder of the Vienna-based Aerospace International Research Center and the editor-in-chief of a space journal called Room.

The idea is that once Ashurbeyli and his fellow Asgardians launch a satellite, that will open the way for them to designate the spacecraft as the first territory of a new nation in the sky. That would pose a challenge to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which appears to rule out assertions of sovereignty in space.

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‘Voyage of Time’ puts scientific genesis on screen

“Voyage of Time” makes use of cosmic imagery like this view of Europa with Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as a backdrop. (Credit: Broad Green Pictures)

Is it possible to create a visual gospel, to be seen on a movie screen rather than read from a parchment? If so, that’s what filmmaker Terrence Malick has created in “Voyage of Time.”

The 40-minute IMAX documentary is in its first week of release at theaters across the country, including the Boeing IMAX Theater at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. There’s also a 90-minute, 35mm version that’s coming soon.

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Spectral SETI claims stir up criticism

The Breakthrough Listen project will use the Automated Planet Finder to observe a controversial sampling of stars. (Credit: Vogt et al. 2014 / UC-Berkeley / Lick Observatory)

Two astronomers have generated a debate by claiming that they may have found the spectral signature of messages from an extraterrestrial civilization – but the debate is mostly over whether the claims are worth publishing.

The claims are contained in a research paper that was written by Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier of Quebec’s Laval University. The paper is scheduled to appear in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

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Spaceflight signs up Google for satellite launch

An artist’s conception shows Terra Bella’s SkySat satelltes in orbit. (Credit: Terra Bella)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries says it’s made a deal with Terra Bella to have the Google subsidiary’s Earth-observing satellites launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket next year.

The agreement makes Terra Bella, which was known as Skybox Imaging before Google bought it for $500 million in 2014, the lead payload provider on a dedicated-rideshare mission arranged through Spaceflight Industries’ launch services entity, known simply as Spaceflight.

“At this point, it looks like Terra Bella may be the only lead,” Spaceflight’s president, Curt Blake, told GeekWire in an email today. So far, seven of Terra Bella’s SkySat satellites have been put into orbit, and that number is expected to grow to 24. Blake declined to say how many of Terra Bella’s satellites would be launched on Spaceflight’s mission in late 2017.

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Obama talks up NASA’s vision for Mars

An artist’s conception shows one configuration for an orbital habitat complex suitable for Mars. (Credit: Lockheed Martin)

President Barack Obama is throwing a spotlight on NASA’s plan for Mars exploration – and habitation – in advance of this week’s White House-backed conference on the frontiers of technology.

“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time,” Obama said in an essay published today on CNN.com.

The president’s space vision statement comes in the wake of SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk’s unveiling of a plan that could theoretically start putting settlers on Mars before NASA astronauts get there.

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