The United Arab Emirates first ever nanosatellite, Nayif-1, was launched a few hours earlier – it was among 104 satellites propelled into outer space on board the PSLV-C37 rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. Read more
You can find the full Outlook, covering the Lindau conference, Nobel prize winners, and Q&As with George Smoot and Brian Schmidt, here. Read more
The United Arab Emirates yesterday announced its plan to create the country’s space agency and to send its first unmanned exploration probe to Mars by 2021. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice-president of UAE and monarch of Dubai, said that the country has already raised 20 billion dirham (~US$5.44 billion) for the agency, which will be responsible for all of space exploration activities in the country as well as developing the technologies needed. Read more
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Read more
Buzz Aldrin is a retired US Air Force pilot, a former American astronaut and the second person to walk on the Moon, on July 21, 1969. He was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. Read more
A young Kuwait scientist has launched a campaign in the Middle East to give people a chance to name an asteroid, hoping it would reignite Arab’s passion with science and space. Read more
As of April 13, 2012, Voyager 2 was 9.127 billion miles from Earth, beyond the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 2 is leaving the solar system at 36,000 miles per hour, or 1 light year per 18,600 years. So reports the MIT Space Plasma Group. Read more
Last month, President Obama revealed NASA’s budget for 2013. At $17.7 million the agency is taking a hit, but the biggest loser is the agency’s Mars program which has been allocated $318 million less than last year. This funding cut has forced NASA out of ExoMars, the joint mission with the European Space Agency (ESA) designed to culminate with a sample return mission. Without NASA, ESA is left in pieces; the US agency was responsible for the launch vehicles and interplanetary spacecraft, not to mention substantial funding. Now, ESA is hoping the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos will take NASA’s place. This partnership could be without payoff since neither country has had great luck with Mars. Particularly Russia, whose missions have been thwarted by the mythical galactic ghoul. Read more
