Lazy Linking™ September 23 2014 (space news)

I stayed up super late on Saturday night to watch the SpaceX resupply launch to the ISS. Cargo includes mice (apparently), a 3D printer (!) and a bunch of experiment equipment. Dragon (the SpaceX ship) will return to Earth with frozen lettuce samples which were grown in space. Space lettuce! They want to know if it's safe to eat, natch, and if it's a viable thing to think about doing, say, on the Moon or Mars. Dragon also has solar wings, which were spread in the third phase of the launch, after the Falcon rocket and its Merlin vacuum engine (I'm not making this up) deployed or fell off or whatever they're said to do.

there's actual accepted naming conventions for Space Things, as set forth by the International Astronomical Union. So sure, you can spend that fifty bucks or whatever to "name a star", but its real name is going to be numbers and letters, or Canis Major, or whatever.

And in Mars news, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) craft inserted in Mars orbit on Sunday night.

Scientists have made diamonds into nanothreads, which seems as though it might work as well as (or better?) than carbon nanofiber in order to make a space elevator.

In the News: November 11, 2011

Mars Crew Lands after 520 Days : I read articles on this "Mars Mission" with a good deal of interest and amusement. Mars Live Action Role Play? Governmentally funded? I just want to know why they didn't have space guns, and whether they had astronaut ice cream. I love astronaut ice cream.

The Bloop: Okay, I confess, not a news article in the most recent sense, but a mystery of science and nature.  Or perhaps Cthulhian. Nobody knows.

Asteroid 2055 YU55 passes close by Earth: how close did it get?: While reading about this asteroid, I kept thinking of Susan Beth Pfeffer's book Life as We Knew It. There are two more, but really, the first book was the best of them. I also wondered "Who the hell names these things?" because really, Asteroid 2055 YU55? That's a pretty sucky name.


Western Black Rhino Declared Extinct: Thing like this make me profoundly sad.