The Jade Rabbit

China will launch its first ever moon rover mission on Monday.A rocket carrying the spaceship named "Jade Rabbit" will blast off at 1:30 P.M. If successful, the launch will be an amazing help to China's space exploration programme, which aims to create a space station by 2020 and eventually send someone to the moon.

It will make China only the third nation to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon. Beijing sees its military-run space programme as a great thing to prove that China is amazing in technological research and to promote themselves. China has previously sent two probes to orbit the moon early in November, Beijing offered a look into its secretive space programme when it put a model of its moon rover on public display.

The rover was later named "Yutu", or jade rabbit, following an online poll in which more than three million people voted.The name comes from an ancient Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the moon as the pet of Chang'e, a lunar goddess who swallowed an immortality pill.

Doomed European Satellite

The recent news is that a doomed European satellite is about to hit earth very soon.  The European Space Agency says that one of its research satellites that ran out of fuel will most likely crash to Earth into the ocean.

The agency said Sunday the crash is expected to occur between 6:30 at Sunday or 12:30 on Monday."with a very high probability, a re-entry over Europe can be excluded

."Spokeswoman Jocelyn Landeau said the satellite, GOCE, will mostly disintegrate as it comes down and "we will have only a few pieces which could be 90 kilograms at the most."

NASA is telling everyone to not worry because it is more likely to win the lottery 250,000 times in a row than get hit by any part of the satellite debris. This satellite had survived for triple of the time expected for it to survive

Quantum Teleportation

Going slightly of topic, I have to say that the new method of transportation called Quantum Teleportation is absolutely amazing. This was first attempted in 1997 but did not work at that time. It gives a person the ability to teleport itself or anything else. It is truly an amazing thing. Now I will let a video tell you the rest about Quantum Teleportation in detail.

The Russia Meteor Incident

The recent news is that on Friday morning (Feb.15), the Chelyabinsk region of Russia was shocked by a giant fireball shooting across the sky. 

The explosion, caused by a small meteoroid entering the atmosphere, injured hundreds as it destroyed the windows which sent glass flying all over.

In a way the videos of the glass and fireball gave the scientists the exact location and size and shape of the meteorite and it also gave the scientists help to figure out what happened

Diamonds on Other Planets

Researchers have now found out that the atmosphere of the planets Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter, and Uranus have perfect atmosphere, temperature, and pressure to have carbon in the form of an diamond.

The proof was presented three days ago at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sources conference in Denver. It has been found that Neptune and Uranus have more gems than Jupiter and Saturn.

These diamonds have been found to be a little more dense than the earth diamonds. It has been found out that one of the reasons by which diamonds were created is the lightning in the planets containing diamonds.

Johannes Kepler

Today I am going to write about the astronomer Johannes Kepler's history, and in my next three blog posts, I shall share information about his three laws.

Kepler was born on December 27th, 1571, in Weil der Stadt in Swabia. His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, was a  craftsman who served as mayor of the city. His other grandfather Melchior Guldenmann, ran an inn and was mayor of the nearby village of Eltingen.

His father, Heinrich Kepler, was a soldier who he did not like, and he also did not like his mother. Throughout his whole life Kepler had many illnesses.

Kepler lived with his grandparents until his parents shifted. Then he started studying in a Latin school and turned out to be a great mathematician. After that he followed astronomy and found his love for it. He also worked in the areas of astrology and optics.

NASA is Trying to Capture an Asteroid

NASA has always wanted to catch an asteroid but thought it was too expensive and therefore never tried. But now they found out that capturing an asteroid may not be as difficult or expensive as NASA had thought.

They are currently planning out a bold mission to snatch an asteroid and drag it to a stable orbit near Earth, where it could be visited repeatedly by astronauts for scientific purposes. 

The best way they think to do this is to chase down one of the "mini-moons" that go around our planet temporarily before going back off into deep space.

New Alien Planet

A nearby alien planet six times the size of the Earth is covered with a water-filled atmosphere that includes a strange plasma form of water. Astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of super-Earth Gliese 1214 b (which is the planet's name) is likely water-filled. 

However, this new planet is not like Earth meaning it can't allow human conditions. The high temperature and density of this planet gives it an atmosphere that is a lot different than Earth, so therefore no one can live there.

Although it is still a great discovery because it proves that water does exist outside our planet, it also proves that there may be aliens.

Ten New Black Holes

The recent news is that ten extremely large black holes have been found with the help of a super telescope. The super telescope is a black hole hunting telescope called NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array). Although they discovered the black holes by accident, it is still a great discovery. The observatory is called the x-ray space observatory. It is an achievement because this discovery shows that there is so much of the galaxy that we do not know about.

Before the discovery there used to be mysterious sources of light which have now been identified as the light from one of the black holes. NASA uses a cosmic x-ray background so they can identify which thing is what in space. For example, a black hole's color in the cosmic x-ray background is purple. This discovery also proves that the bigger the galaxy, the more black holes.

This proves, as I said, that there are many other black holes and galaxies. It also proves that the universe is infinite, and it is continuously growing.

Chocolate for the International Space Station (ISS)

NASA launched a space station in 2008 with the help of the world. The International Space Station (ISS) is a project made with the help of 15 different countries.The ISS partners are Canada, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States, and eleven Member States of the European Space Agency (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom).

The ISS does not belong to any single country but belongs to all of them. The ISS partners have an agreement called the IGA (intergovernmental agreement).

The recent news is that a new company, Orbital Sciences, will send food to the ISS in an unmanned rocket, and on their first shipment, one of the food items that they are sending is chocolates!

NASA is planning to send chocolate to the astronauts through the space station delivery of food. It appears that the astronauts are very excited for the chocolate coming with the food. In an interview, astronaut Karen Nyberg, said that they are excitedly waiting for the chocolates.

Neuron Star

Neutron stars are ancient remnants of stars that have reached the end of their evolutionary journey through space and time.

These interesting objects are born from once-large stars that grew to four to eight times the size of our own sun before exploding in catastrophic supernovae. After such an explosion blows a star's outer layers into space, the core remains but it no longer produces nuclear fusion. With no outward pressure from fusion to counterbalance gravity's inward pull, the star collapses in upon itself.

Robotic Snake

Europe is planning on sending red robotic snakes in space because they say that robot snakes can reach places where rovers can not.  The ESA (European Space Agency) wants to attach the red robotic snakes to the Mars rover's arms so that when the rover reaches an area where he can't go, he launches the snakes to take footage.

It seems that Hollywood is making a movie about the red robotic snake, which is surprising since first Hollywood makes the movies, then they are made in real life. The ESA says that the robot snake will be more efficient than the Mars rover.

The ESA also says that the robotic snakes will help them discover the secrets of the red planet.

Voyager 1

Voyager 1 which is a spaceship launched on September 5th, 1977, and it currently has been found exiting our solar system and into interstellar space. At first the Voyager 1 was like the boy cried wolf as the scientists couldn't decide whether Voyager 1 had left the solar system, but at 2012 it was realized that Voyager 1 had actually left the solar system and had gone to interstellar space.Interstellar space is a space which is the space between stars and solar systems.

Dark Matter

Dark matter is a mysterious force in the universe. Astronomers are making a dark energy camera to figure out what dark matter really is.

In the mid 1990's astronomers tried to figure out why the universe kept on expanding, they found out that a dark energy was making it expand. It has also been found out that every day the universe starts to expand even faster. It seams that everything we have observed is only five percent of the universe, the rest is made up of dark energy and matter. Astronomers are currently trying to observe the affects of dark energy which accounts for some 70 percent of the universe. But it's not the only dark stuff in the cosmos because roughly 25 percent of it is made up of an entirely separate material called dark matter. Completely invisible to telescopes and the human eye, it neither gives out or absorbs visible light, but its gravitational effect is obvious in the motions of galaxy clusters and individual stars.

Although dark matter has proven extremely difficult to study, many scientists say that it might be composed of subatomic particles that are different from those that create the matter we see around us.There is also a theory on alternate universes because of dark matter. These alternate universes may or may not have dark matter or energy.

Relation of Astronomy to Greek Stories

Has anyone ever noticed that the stars and planets are all related to Greek mythology. For example lets take Orion's belt. The stories say that Orion liked the maiden goddess Artemis and she liked him back. When her brother found out he turned Orion into a bear and tricked Artemis to hunt him. Artemis killed Orion, when she realized Orion was the bear she made him into a star.

The star Andromeda was named after the story of Andromeda. Andromeda’s mother Cassiopeia boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nerieds. To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon, brother to Zeus and god of the sea, sent a sea monster named Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia including the kingdom of the vain queen. The desperate king consulted the Oracle of Apollo, who announced that no respite would be found until the king sacrificed his daughter, Andromeda, to the monster. Perseus was returning from having slain the Medusa. After he happened upon the chained Andromeda, he approached Cetus while invisible (for he was wearing Hades's helm), and killed the sea monster. He set Andromeda free, and married her.

Nebula

Planetary nebulae are caused by the death of red giant stars. During their final years, long after the hydrogen fuel has run out in their cores, these puffed up stars begin to shed their outer layers, blasting huge quantities of material into space. At the end of its life the sun will also enter into a red giant phase, swallowing up the inner solar system planets (possibly even Earth), eventually creating its own planetary nebula. The resulting nebulous clouds can take on many beautiful shapes, but bipolar planetary nebulae can be the most striking, generating two lobes of material expanding in opposite directions. These nebulae often resemble butterfly wings.

Quasars

Quasars are the most intense source of light in the universe. They are the most distant objects in the universe. The brightest quasar, 3C 273, is 2.5 billion light years away. The energy used by quasars come from a black hole at their core,which draws in matter. The black in the quasar has the same mass as a 100 million suns.

Solar Maximum

The sun’s magnetic field is expected to flip in the next three to four months and it could lead to changes in our climate, storms, and disruptions to satellites, which, trust me, would not be good. This solar event only happens once every 11 years and signals what physicists call the Solar Maximum - a time when the Sun's solar activity is at its highest. During this peak in activity the outbursts of solar energy can increase the amount of sun rays going towards Earth and this can interfere with radio communications and cause solar bursts of light which are known as flares. It can also affect the earth's temperature.

Black holes

Black holes are places in space that suck everything into them. Gravity is so strong in the black holes that even light cant escape. Their are two theories for what would happen if a person fell into a black hole. The fist one says that if a human fell into a black hole they would be stretched like spaghetti and they would die. While the second one which is believed by Dr. Stephen Hawking stated that time would freeze, and a billion years later the human would come out exactly the same. Black holes are formed when a star or a galaxy becomes so dense that it collapses under the pull of its own gravity. Black holes may exist at the heart of every galaxy.

astronomy

Astronomy is the study of stars, planets and suns. The universe is bigger than anyone could imagine. It is not measurable. Most stars and planets are not visible by the naked eye, but have to be seen with a telescope. There are billions of stars all across the universe. Scientists have not even discovered  1/1000000000000 of the universe, which is disappointing. Astronomy is the most ancient of all sciences.The ancient Egyptians used astronomy to make their pyramids. Space objects give radiation which astronomers use to detect new stars.