Farewell, Discovery

The Space Shuttle Discovery will be launching for the last time on February 24th at 1:50pm PST. Mission STS-133 will be the 39th flight of the 27 year-old spacecraft, and will be bringing the Permanent Multipurpose Module Leonardo to the International Space Station, as well as the Robonaut 2 robotic astronaut helper.

With only two more Space Shuttle flights scheduled (Endeavour in April and Atlantis in June), this represents the end of an era of ambitious human space exploration, as after that the US will be left with no means of sending astronauts into space and will rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the ISS.

With the cancellation of the Constellation moon program in October 2010, the only serious prospect for US manned space flights is the privately funded and operated Dragon capsule from SpaceX, which, although a remarkable achievement for a private company, is a return to 1970's designs, and is nowhere as advanced and capable as the Space Shuttle. And Dragon will not be operational before 2013 at the earliest.

Watch the historic flight live in HD on ustream TV.

Update: For those who missed it, here is the video of the launch.

Apollo 18 movie: Cloverfield meets the Space Program

We finally have a trailer for the upcoming movie 'Apollo 18', a horror science fiction movie about a hypothetical 18th Apollo moon landing. As most of you know, in real life the last Apollo mission was Apollo17th. The premise of the movie is that an 18th mission actually took place, but it was kept a total secret. The movie shows raw footage from portable cameras brought aboard by the crew, just like in the movie Cloverfield.

Ares I Resurrected! Give me Liberty

ATK, the makers of the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters is joining force with European aerospace company Astrium/EADS, the makers of the Ariane 5 rocket, to propose a new rocket to launch US astronauts into space after the Space Shuttle retires later this year. The new Liberty rocket would be operational in 2015.

Gliese 581g, Mono Lake and the Drake Equation

In September 2010, scientists discovered a new extrasolor planet, Gliese 581g, that is to date the planet the most similar to earth that we found. It is in the Gliese 581 star system, only 20 Light-years from us, and orbits its sun at the right distance to have liquid water, so it is not too warm and not too cold. It has a gravity similar to earth (between 1.1 and 1.7 G) strong enough to maintain a thick atmosphere.

New Black Ops Map Pack

Treyarch is releasing a Map Pack for Call Of Duty: Black Ops. It will include a Berlin Wall map, Kowloon map, Stadium and Arctic research station maps as well as a new Zombie map called Ascension.

Cats in Space!

Oh, this is hilarious. This is part of a series of experiments made by the US Air Force to study the effects of Zero G on humans and animals. 



Now I'm gonna dream of Molly and Delilah fighting in zero G... Thanks io9.com for the clip.

This is the car we will all be driving in 2020

       

Forget about the fancy $30,000+ gas-guzzlers showcased at the Detroit Auto Show, the Indian made Tata Nano is the kind of car we will be driving 10 years from now. It weighs only 1,300 lb, has a 624cc, 35hp gas engine, it does 62mpg and it costs only $2,200. That's one-tenth the price of a baseline Toyota Prius.

When gas will cost $10 a gallon and with ever dwindling resources and incomes, i believe this will be the only kind of car that will make sense - or the only one that we'll be able to afford.