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.