BBC-Focus - "the world's best science & tchnology monthly"- heeft dit keer een artikel van sciencefiction-auteur Stephen Baxter over ruimtekolonisatie "Humanity's ultimate migration to the stars".

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express has captured breathtaking images of the Deuteronilus Mensae region on Mars.

The strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now has been unearthed by NASA's Spirit rover.

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Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope has been used by researchers to make the first-ever map of an extrasolar planet.

Voor degene die gewend zijn geraakt aan de steeds gedetailleerdere foto's en kaaten van planeten en manen binnen ons zonnestelsel is de kaart nogal teleurstellend. Eigenlijk is het alleen een kaart met de temperatuurverdeling van de exoplaneet HD 189733b, een Hete Jupiter 63 lichtjaar hiervandaan.

Aardachtige planeet ontdekt

Er is nogal wat spektakel over de nieuwe exoplaneet die is ontdekt bij het rode dwergsterretje Gliese 581. Het is natuurlijk wel bijzonder dat het de eerste planeet buiten het zonnestelsel is die enigszins op de aarde lijkt - alle tot nu toe ontdekte planeten zijn gasreuzen - maar om gelijk te suggereren dat er water zou zijn en dus de mogelijkheid op leven gaat wel wat ver.

From the Esa website:

SMART-1 has investigated lunar areas at the edge of Luna Incognita. This area near the lunar poles can be used for lunar science studies, or even to prepare for human bases on the Moon and on Mars.

Donald Davis was commissioned to do paintings for NASA in the 1970s and is now offering them to the public domain. I like his interpretation of the "Stanford Torus".

He also published his thoughts on space colonies at his website.

Again, Larry Kellogg inspired me to write this post. Will it ever be possible to colonize the moon? I read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" years ago, which is about a libertarian Moon Colony; personally I was always more interested in colonizing Mars, but why not considering other possibilities? Let's quote at full length from Kellogg's post:

QUESTION:

How would we live on the Moon?

Larry Kellog pointed me to an important document "NASA 1965 Summer Conference on Lunar Exploration and Science (NASA SP-88)". It is a document of 420 pages long, that talks about the Apollo Extension System (AES), the follow-up of the Apollo program with longer stay times, greater exploration capabilities for the 1970-1974 period. Unfortunately, the Apollo project stopped after Apollo 17.

Ice on the Moon is just a myth.

Paris - Hopes that the Moon's South Pole has a vast hoard of ice that could be used to establish a lunar colony are sadly unfounded, a new study says.

In 1994, radar echoes sent back in an experiment involving a United States orbiter called Clementine appeared to show that a treasure trove of frozen water lay below the dust in craters near the lunar South Pole that were permanently shaded from the Sun.