Search for exoplanets and new forms of life.

Cosmic satellites are at the forefront, solving the most ancient question of astronomy. Search for another Earth. Now a new generation of automated researchers are searching for tracks outside the solar planets and finding them. Outside the solar planets are simply planets that revolve around other stars. 8 large planets rotate around our sun, and our Sun is a typical star. Thus, an old question arises. Are there any planets in the stars?

Wildest Weather in the Cosmos.

The documentary film «Wildest Weather in the Cosmos. The Universe». Season 2. Episode 15.

If a planet has an atmosphere it has weather. And where there is weather there are storms. Our solar system is chock full of them. And the bigger the temperature extreme the bigger the storm. Which makes Earth hurricanes and thunderstorms seem rather uninteresting.

Imagine a tornado so powerful, it can form a planet, or winds sweeping across a planet but blowing at 6,000 miles per hour! How about rain....made of iron? Sounds like science fiction, but this type of weather is occurring daily in our solar system. Scientists are just beginning to unlock the secrets of these planets and their atmospheres. Can this research help scientists solve long unanswered questions that we have about Earth? As our own planet churns with the effects of global warming, it's natural to look into the heavens and wonder about the rest of the real estate.

The Universe is an American documentary television series that features computer-generated imagery and computer graphics of astronomical objects in the universe plus interviews with experts who study in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics. The program is produced by Flight 33 Productions and Workaholic Productions.

Space Ion drive (tested in space ).

Traveling to an outer space needs the propulsion unit, taken from the science fiction, the ionic engine. The ion engine is similar to a mini linear accelerator. Dispersing ions behind, the ship moves forward. Ion engine is very weak pull, but it works 1 time for a month. This is enough to disperse the ship faster and faster. In an ionic engine, the chemical fuel is replaced by an inert gas xenon. The xenon is acted upon by an electric charge, i.e., ionized. The electric field accelerates ions, pushing them from the rear of the ship pushes it forward.

Sentinel-2B | 4K

This timelapse video shows Sentinel-2B satellite, from final preparations to liftoff on a Vega launcher, flight VV09, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, on 7 March 2017.

Sentinel-2B is the second satellite in the Sentinel-2 mission for Europe’s Copernicus environment monitoring programme.

Designed as a two-satellite constellation – Sentinel-2A and -2B – the Sentinel-2 mission carries an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands for a new perspective of our land and vegetation. This information is used for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage food security. It also provides information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters. Images of floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides contribute to disaster mapping and help humanitarian relief efforts.

Марсоход ExoMars 2020.

This visualisation presents a 360º view of the ExoMars 2020 rover.


The 310 kg rover will traverse the martian landscape on six wheels. It will be the first rover capable of drilling down 2 m, where ancient biomarkers may still be preserved from the harsh radiation environment on the surface. The drill is housed in the large grey box at the front of the rover.

Navigation cameras (at the top of the mast) and ‘localisation’ cameras (at the base of the mast) are used to determine where the rover is and where it will move.

Power is supplied to the rover by solar panels. These are folded during the journey to Mars and opened once the rover is on the surface.

NEBULAS. The Universe. Season 2. Episode 14.

The documentary film «Nebulas. The Universe». Season 2. Episode 14.

They are the crown jewels of the galaxy. Neither stars, planets, moons or asteroids, they are the mysterious clouds of gas we call NEBULAS. Nearly invisible to the naked eye, astronomers use the most sophisticated techniques to tease images of these fascinating phenomena from the dark sky. When revealed in their full glory, they glow, reflect or obscure the galaxy's light. 

Take a tour through the art gallery of the galaxy and view what are considered the crown jewels of the heavens.

The U. S. commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo craft was released from the Int...

The U.S. commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo craft was released from the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm in the early hours of March 19, after spending more than three weeks at the orbital outpost. During that time, the crew onboard transferred onto the station several tons of supplies and scientific investigations delivered by Dragon. Expedition 50 crew members Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) and Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA bid farewell to Dragon as the resupply craft moved to a safe distance away from the complex for its deorbit engine firing and a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific. Dragon is returning critical science experiments for investigators back on the Earth.

Rocket launch Delta IV WGS 9.

A Delta IV rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex-37 with the Air Force's ninth Wideband Global SATCOM satellite.

A look at X9 in 47 Tucanae.

In astronomy, a binary system is one where two objects are close enough that they orbit each other because they are gravitationally bound to one another. There are many possible combinations of binary systems: stars like the Sun orbiting each other, two neutron stars, a massive star and a smaller one, and so on. Binary systems are useful to astronomers for many reasons, including being useful laboratories to measure the masses of stars.

Recently, astronomers have found a particularly interesting binary. This pair has a white dwarf star in orbit around a black hole. While scientists have found this configuration many times before, this binary, known as X9, is special. That’s because it has the closest orbit ever seen between a black hole and a companion star.

The X9 system is located in 47 Tucanae, a dense star cluster in the outskirts of the Milky Way. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory along with data from other telescopes, researchers determined that the white dwarf makes one complete orbit around the black hole in less than a half an hour. This means that the separation between the white dwarf and the black hole is about two and half times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. In cosmic terms, these two objects are extremely close together.

What does this close pairing mean for the objects in X9? The extreme proximity likely spells a bleak future for the white dwarf. Although scientists don’t expect the white dwarf to fall into the black hole, they do think so much material will be pulled from the star that it will one day become some sort of exotic planet or even evaporate all together. In the short term, astronomers are going to watch this system very closely, because they don’t know exactly how such an extreme system will behave.

Journey to Jupiter.

This animation shows the proposed trajectory of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explore (Juice) mission to Jupiter.

Based on a launch in June 2022, the spacecraft will make a series of gravity-assist flybys at Earth (May 2023, September 2024 and November 2026), Venus (October 2023) and Mars (February 2025) before arriving in the Jupiter system in October 2029. 

The animation ends at the Jupiter orbit insertion point, but the planned 3.5 year mission will see Juice not only orbit Jupiter, but also make dedicated flybys of the moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, before orbiting the largest moon, Ganymede.

Rocket launch SpaceX Falcon 9 (EchoStar 23).

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched EchoStar XXIII communications satellite from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on 16 March 2017, at 06:00 UTC (02:00 EDT). EchoStar 23 will be delivered to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) approximately 34 minutes after launch. SpaceX did not attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage after launch due to mission requirements.

Colonizing Space. The Universe. Season 2. Episode 13.

The documentary film « Colonizing Space. The Universe». Season 2. Episode 13.

Many considerations come to the forefront when planning space travel beyond the moon. Scientists are currently working on overcoming the many challenges and testing their solutions.

Space colonization is no longer the fodder of science fiction, it is becoming a reality. Examine the efforts underway to establish a human colony on Mars, including how they plan to grow food, recycle wastewater and introduce greenhouse gases to revive the red planet and make it more habitable for humans. Cutting-edge computer graphics are used to bring the universe down to earth to show what life would be like on Mars, and to imagine what kind of life forms might evolve in alien atmospheres.

The Universe is an American documentary television series that features computer-generated imagery and computer graphics of astronomical objects in the universe plus interviews with experts who study in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics. The program is produced by Flight 33 Productions and Workaholic Productions.

Space News.

NASA conducted the latest successful test of the Orion spacecraft’s parachute system on March 8 in the skies above the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The test was designed to evaluate the parachutes’ performance in an emergency abort situation that would require Orion to be jettisoned from the agency’s Space Launch System rocket during a launch. Even at this relatively low altitude, the parachutes are designed to fully deploy and safely return Orion and its crew to Earth. Also, Shin Honored by Aviation Week, Space Station Resupply Mission Targeted for March 19, Small Business Innovation Proposals Selected, Deep Space Atomic Clock, Modern Figures Virtual Tour, and NASA Aero “Night of Flight”!

Warp drive. Interstellar flights.

The reasoning of scientists about potential future engines for interstellar flights. On such engines as: a solar sail or a photon sail, a nuclear engine based on the synthesis of nuclei, a thermonuclear engine on antimatter and a motor deforming the space warp engine. What time will it take for spacecraft working on such engines to fly to the nearest stellar system, such as Alpha Centauri.


Warp drive is a faster-than-light (FTL) spacecraft propulsion system in many science fiction works, most notably Star Trek. A spacecraft equipped with a warp drive may travel at speeds greater than that of light by many orders of magnitude. In contrast to other FTL technologies such as a jump drive or hyper drive, the warp drive does not permit instantaneous (or near instantaneous) travel between two points but involves a measurable passage of time which is problematic to the concept. Spacecraft at warp velocity theoretically continue to interact with objects in "normal space". The general concept of "warp drive" was introduced by John W. Campbell.

Einstein's theory of special relativity states that energy and mass are interchangeable, thus, speed of light travel is impossible for material objects that weigh more than photons. The problem of a material object exceeding light speed is that an infinitely increasing amount of kinetic energy is required to attempt moving as fast as a massless photon. This problem can theoretically be solved by warping space to move an object instead of increasing the kinetic energy of the object to do so.

The Seven Wonders of Trappist-1.

Launch of the Vega Rocket (Sentinel 2B).

Arianespace has successfully launched its small satellite launcher on it's 9th mission carrying the Sentinel 2B Earth observation satellite for the European Space Agency's Copernicus programme, in partnership with the European Commission.

Liftoff occurred at 01:49 UTC from Kourou in French Guiana. Sentinel-2B is the 5th satellite for the Copernicus programme, 2B will be positioned in an opposite orbit of it's sister Sentinel 2A which launched on a Vega rocket back in June 2015.

Cosmic Collisions. The Universe. Season 2. Episode 12.

The documentary film «Cosmic Collisions. The Universe». Season 2. Episode 12.

It's been said that our universe is a cosmic shooting gallery. Gravity is moving everything around and things are bound to collide. Astronomers are attempting to understand how these collisions occur in the dark recesses of space. Learn about collisional families, which are clusters of comets and asteroids; planetary collisions; mass extinction impacts involving asteroids and comets; stars collisions; and galaxy cluster collisions. Cutting-edge computer graphics are used to bring this series down to earth as the heavens yield their greatest secrets.

Collisions between relatively minor bodies in the solar system can have far reaching effects. Astronomers are trying to trace meteors that caused mass extinctions back to the event that cause them to cross Earth's path in case they have relatives waiting to pay a visit.

The Universe is an American documentary television series that features computer-generated imagery and computer graphics of astronomical objects in the universe plus interviews with experts who study in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics. The program is produced by Flight 33 Productions and Workaholic Productions.

UNIVERSE

Look at the Universe channel.

Unexplained Mysteries. The Universe. Season 2. Episode 11.

The documentary film «Unexplained Mysteries. The Universe». Season 2. Episode 11.


A few of the astronomical mysteries that bother scientists and the progress toward understanding them are described.
Delve into the myths, misconceptions, truths and amazing mysteries of our unique universe. Could life exist on Mars? Is time travel possible and does Einstein's theory of relativity support it? Is there a companion dark star to our sun and could it pose a threat to earth? Learn about the spark that lit the big bang. Take a journey from science fiction that predicted all these things, to the scientific reality of what they mean to us in the ever-changing universe.

The Universe is an American documentary television series that features computer-generated imagery and computer graphics of astronomical objects in the universe plus interviews with experts who study in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics. The program is produced by Flight 33 Productions and Workaholic Productions.

Rocket Launch Atlas V (NROL-79).

United Launch Alliance launched the 70th Atlas V rocket today at 17:50 UTC, March 1st 2017 from SLC-3E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.