The Space Station is Back in Business

Yesterday's launch of a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan has reestablished our link with the International Space Station.  The Russian resupply mission, named Progress M-13M (or Progress 45 to NASA), is the first since a rocket failure last August.  If all goes well, a new crew will replace the current three person crew in November.  

NASA is already looking forward to a six person crew in December:

We congratulate our Russian colleagues on Sunday's successful launch of ISS Progress 45, and the spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station. Pending the outcome of a series of flight readiness meetings in the coming weeks, this successful flight sets the stage for the next Soyuz launch, planned for mid-November. The December Soyuz mission will restore the space station crew size to six and continue normal crew rotations.

Profile Piece on Elon Musk

The Wall Street Journal had a recent piece on Elon Musk, the South African born founder of SpaceX, Telsa, and SolarCity.  The article contained a nice summary of his various endeavors, including this snapshot of SpaceX:

Around the Dragon, in this cavernous former Boeing 747 factory in Hawthorne, California, 1,500 young engineers and techs are building four more Falcon 9s. Musk has contracts for over 30 more launches worth $3 billion—including $1.6 billion from NASA. If all goes according to plan, in late December his third F9 launch will dock with the International Space Station. This 40-year-old is dreaming the stuff of nations.

With all the media focused on mediocre celebrities in Hollywood, it is nice to see a profile on someone who is really changing the world for the better. 

Fascinating Discoveries Throughout the Galaxy

This past summer astronomers showcased a number of fascinating planetary discoveries, from diamonds in the sky to Star Wars-like home worlds.  Here is a sampling that can only further intrigue observers:

-- Diamond Planet:  Astronomers spotted a "planet" about 4,000 light years away that seems to consist of nothing but diamonds (or at least compressed carbon, which should be the same thing).  "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

-- Two Sun Planet:  NASA's Kepler spacecraft spotted  a planet revolving around two suns.  Kepler-16, as the new system is known, has two stars that orbit around each other as well as a planet that orbits around both of them every 229 days.  Yes, just as Luke Skywalker stared into binary sunset on Tatooine, it is possible that this can be happening elsewhere in this strange universe of ours.   

-- Super Earths:  The European Southern Observatory located 50 new planets, 16 of which are much larger than our Earth.  One of them, HD 85512 b, is only 35 light years away and estimated to be about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This newly discovered planet may also contain liquid water, which is a hopeful sign of potential life. 

All of these new findings come at a time where government programs, including NASA, are under great strain.  Maybe this will energize the debate to keep this area of science alive.  We need to dream to advance as a species, and these discoveries show us that some of our dreams may not even be wild enough to capture the real world (or worlds).