Stories about the fictional planet Nibiru and predictions of doomsday in December 2012 have blossomed on the Internet. There are now (June 2009) more than 175 books listed on Amazon.com dealing with the 2012 doomsday. As this hoax spreads, many more disaster scenarios are being suggested. “Ask an Astrobiologist” has received nearly a thousand questions about Nibiru and 2012, with more than 200 answers posted.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It’s the most expensive single thing ever built (£92bn and counting), the quickest manned vehicle in existence (17,300mph) and the staging point for future Moon and Mars missions. But when computers on board the International Space Station go down, the astronauts living there do the same as any office drone in Slough–they call IT. We were lucky enough to meet Tyson Tucker and Joey Crawford, the NASA flight controllers responsible for maintaining uptime in mankind’s first permanent space colony.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

For all its might, the World Wide Web is still limited to, well, our world. But that’s quickly changing with the advent of an “interplanetary internet” that planners say will revolutionize space communication. The Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) system, which entered another phase of testing this week, will allow astronauts to Google from the moon or tweet their observations from space.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A 10-person committee charged with reviewing the future of U.S. human spaceflight will hold its first public meeting today, beginning a process that must cover a lot of territory in very little time.

The independent panel of experts will examine NASA’s Constellation Program, which plans to send humans to the International Space Station (ISS), the moon, and possibly Mars, and will consider alternatives to options already on the table.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In an unprecedented scientific endeavor–and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever–NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.

The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon’s south pole.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When astronauts in orbit stress out, they call Earth to chat with a NASA psychiatrist. But transmitting messages to Mars and beyond would take 20 minutes or so, requiring new approaches to mental health in space. So researchers are developing self-help software that allows space travelers to carry their counselors with them on a DVD.

Read the rest of this post

Fans of extraterrestrial life may have been disappointed when Internet-fed rumors of Martian life ended in a NASA press conference on soil composition. But they can take solace in a newly popular theory that suggests the rest of space may teem with microbes.

Read the rest of this post

In yet another powerful showcase of Twitter’s potential power as a disseminator of information, today several people received the first information via the service that NASA has confirmed that its Phoenix Mars Lander has, in fact, found water on Mars. It’s still not on CNN.com, not on MSNBC.com, not on Fox.com. But a Twitter search query reveals it’s all over Twitter.

As a result of the news spreading quickly through Twitter, it’s also now all over FriendFeed, where some discussions are taking place on the subject. This is the kind of stuff these services are built for.

The water was found in ice-rich soil. Tests confirmed the ice was water-based.

Read the rest of this post

Talk about cross-promotion.

One of the closest things to Disney World’s Orlando, Fla., home, is NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and this is relevant because on Friday, it was announced that among the objects expected to be blasted into the sky with the planned Saturday launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery is a figurine of Toy Story space ranger Buzz Lightyear.

Disney World, of course, is where the new Toy Story Mania ride has just opened.

Read the rest of this post

People got very excited in 2004 when NASA’s rover Opportunity discovered evidence that Mars had once been wet. Where there is water, there may be life. … What could be more fascinating than discovering life that had evolved entirely independently of life here on Earth? Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we are not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos. But I hope that our Mars probes discover nothing. It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit.

Read the rest of this post

While most of us slept on the morning of March 19, hours before the death of famed science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was announced, a shot rang out in the Universe the likes of which are unknown in human history. By a preliminary analysis, this object was visible to the unaided human eye in the constellation Bootes, and at an estimated 7.5 billion light years, it was the farthest object ever observable by the human eye in all of recorded history. In addition, it was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making this event, according to a NASA news release, “the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe.”

Read the rest of this post