Space News & Blog Articles

It’s no secret that the commercial space industry (aka. NewSpace) has become immensely lucrative in recent years, nor the fact that it has become intensely competitive as a result. To illustrate, one needs to look no further than the top three NewSpace companies in the world right now: SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. Between these three companies, all founded by billionaires with similar visions, a new space race has begun.

Predicting volcanic eruptions is notoriously tricky. In large part this is because volcanos are unique, each with their own quirks and personalities: the lessons learned from studying one volcano may not apply directly to another. Luckily, researchers are getting better at finding warning signs that they can apply broadly. Some of the most well-known are heightened seismic activity, rising temperatures, expanding magma pools, and the release of gases. New research using satellite imagery now offers a new warning sign for underwater volcanos: a change in the color of the ocean.

These days it seems you can’t walk through a bookstore without bumping into a book or magazine pointing out the negative consequences of climate change.  Everything from the hottest years on record to ruining astronomy can be tied to climate change.  Now some new science lays another potential problem at climate change’s feet – the Earth is retaining more than twice as much heat annually as it was 15 years ago.

Every day, there are more indications that show how anthropogenic factors are causing uncomfortable changes in our climate. Here in beautiful British Columbia, this means that wildfires are once again threatening countless acres of forests, communities, and wildlife. By the end of June 2021, more than 40 wildfires were raging across the province, including a rather substantial cluster around the town of Lytton.

This month, two billionaires will be flying to space aboard their very own commercial launch vehicles. The first to go will be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who will be a passenger aboard the inaugural crewed flight of the New Shepard on July 20th. Mark Bezos, Jeff’s brother, will be accompanying him on this flight, as will the person who won the auction that wrapped up on June 12th (they bid $28 million for the seat).

Surprising findings sometimes come in small packages.  And sometimes those small packages have to be delivered by very big systems.  Physicists at MIT made some surprising findings from a very small radioactive molecule that was created in an accelerator at CERN.  They believe that, if studied closely enough, these new types of radioactive molecules could shine some light on why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe.