Would you want to go to Mars, if you couldn't come back?

Fortunately, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were the first humans to land on the Moon in 1969, made it back to Earth alive. That spared us the horror of listening to the speech that then-President Richard Nixon was prepared to deliver, in the event that the Lunar Module had failed to lift off from the lunar surface--a catastrophe for which NASA had no rescue plan. 

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon in explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

I mention this, because thinking about that what-if still gives me the creeps. It's frightening to imagine being one of those astronauts, stranded on an alien orb with no chance of returning home.  Of course, they wouldn't have been the first brave explorers to set out on a mission and never return. Ferdinand de Magellan, who was hacked and stabbed to death in 1521 while trying to circumnavigate the globe, and Sir John Franklin, who failed to find a passageway through the Arctic ice and instead perished in 1847, are only two of the more grisly examples.

Russian Meteor Mayhem

A few years ago, British science writer David Spiegelhalter calculated that the odds of a person on Earth being hit by a falling meteorite are about one in 20 quadrillion. I suspect, however, that those odds weren't much comfort to the 1,200 Russians injured as the result of a 10,000-ton meteor that exploded high over the Ural Mountains just after sunrise on Friday. 

Although initially reported by the Russian Academy of Sciences as smaller and lighter, NASA says the meteor was 55 feet in diameter and weighed 10,000 tons when it entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 40,000 miles per hour, and then shattered into pieces between 18 and 32 miles above the Earth's surface. The blast released what the Associated Press describes as "the power of an atomic bomb" and sent fragments raining down upon Chelyabinsk, a Russian city of one million, which lies about 930 miles east of Moscow. (See photos of the aftermath.) The shock wave caused by the meteor shattered an estimated one million square meters of glass, and damaged 3,000 buildings in the city, according to local officials quoted by AP. The Moscow Times reported that it caused an estimated $33 million in damage. Here's a YouTube video shot by a local resident, showing the contrail left in the sky by the meteor, and the sound of the blast.

Check out this video to see more footage of the meteor captured by witnesses:

 

Top 5 Space Discoveries of 2012

The biggest space exploration discovery of 2012 is the one that existed only in the collective consciousness of the Internet rumor mill. After a NASA scientist teased National Public Radio in November by saying that the Mars robotic rover Curiosity had collected data that was going to be "one for the history books,"  some predicted that the space agency might announce the discovery of a life form on Mars. That didn't quite happen — at least not yet. Nevertheless, it was a year that featured other important discoveries. Here are five of what we think may turn out to be the most significant milestones in the exploration of space during 2012.

5. The Milky Way probably has a whole lot of planets

An international team of astronomers, who used an investigative method called gravitational microlensing to spot planets by looking for their gravitational effect upon distant stars. In a January article in Nature, they estimated that there are 160 billion stars with planets orbiting around them in our galaxy. That's about an average of 1.6 planets per star. 

Watch Video: Learn more about the Milky Way

4. A rectangular galaxy

If you're used to thinking of galaxies as flattened discs resembling the Milky Way's graceful spiral, this one may be hard to get your head around. Astronomers already knew that some galaxies actually were ellipsoids, shaped more like rugby balls, while others were completely irregular. But in March, a team of astronomers led by Alister Graham of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia announced the discovery of the dwarf galaxy LEDA 074886, which has a distinctively rectangular shape. According to Technology Review, what Graham describes as an "emerald cut galaxy" lies about 70 million light years from Earth, and may have formed when two disc-shaped galaxies merged. From our vantage point, the combination looks like a rectangle, just as a gigantic stack of pancakes would.

Watch Video: Carl Sagan explains how galaxies are born

Forget Mars, NASA Probe Finds Ice and Organics on Mercury!

NASA has just announced that MESSENGER, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, has confirmed the presence of ice covered by an unknown organic material inside craters near the planet's north pole - two major building blocks for life!

One current theory is that the ice and organic material could have been delivered to Mercury aboard an asteroid or comet perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago. Of course there’s a lot of painstaking research involved in the findings, as well as other details about this and other theories, so you can get the full story here.

But that's crazy, right? How could there be ice on the closest planet to the sun? It turns out the deep craters shade anything inside from the sun's rays, keeping the temperature cool enough to allow ice to form. It's even possible that liquid water exists on the planet somewhere under the ice!

In Case of End of the World, New Earth-like Exoplanet Discovered

Before our imagination of how the world will end becomes reality and sends people all across the globe into panic mode, astronomers have already begun looking at other planets in hopes of finding Earthlings a new place to call home.

While the Curiosity Rover is busy examining Mars, others are looking at a newly discovered exoplanet that orbit its parent star, HD 40307, at almost the same distant that Earth orbits the sun. At 56 million miles away from the parent star in the constellation Pictor, the exoplanet, located 45 light-years away from our own planet, is in just the right spot for liquid water to exist.

 [Related - Playlist: Are We Alone]

New Song by wil.i.am Beamed from Space!

Don't miss i.am.mars, the TV special that documents the artistic and technical process behind "Reach for the Stars." Tune in Wednesday, September 19 at 10PM e/p on SCIENCE!

When Black Eyed Peas rapper-songwriter will.i.am debuted "Reach for the Stars" back in August, not just in the U.S. or worldwide, but from Mars, there was no doubt that he made history. But this isn’t the first time that NASA has experimented with the sound of music in outer space. What may have first been perceived as an unlikely partnership between music and alien probing has actually been part of a few NASA projects — some carried out in hopes that someday, an intelligent life-form out there might take pleasure in our artistic creations.

Check out this video of the SCIENCE special i.am.mars for a preview of the special:

  

Watch a Tribute to Astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

 

Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) during an Apollo mission. (NASA)

As you can imagine, the news of the passing of Neil Armstrong affected us deeply at Science Channel, so we felt it appropriate to change our regularly scheduled progrmaming to air both favorite and new shows honoring his memory, including When We Left Earth, a comprehensive look back at the Apollo missions and others with stunning restored footage.

When Neil Armstrong left the Earth's atmosphere on July 16, 1969 on his way to the moon 250,000 miles away, he had more than proved himself to have the right stuff to be given the honor, and superhuman feat of being the first person to walk on the moon.

Was Mars Ever Habitable? Curiosity's SAM Instrument Seeks the Answer

After its amazing landing, which felt like it was straight out of a science fiction novel, NASA’s Curiosity rover is now safely on Mars and already at work. “Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's ‘habitability.’”^[1] To do this, Curiosity is equipped with an on-board laboratory that includes instruments ranging from spectrometers and radiation detectors to environmental and atmospheric sensors. Here’s what I learned from my visit to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center last week:

Gale Crater, Curiosity’s landing site, is the ideal place to search for evidence of organic compounds on Mars, many of which are the chemical building blocks of life on Earth. Similar to the Grand Canyon (though three times as high!), Gale Crater has exposed layers of rock that NASA hopes will reveal if there ever was life on Mars. Starting at the base of the crater, where the oldest sediments from the planet’s early years can be found, Curiosity will begin roving the area, performing experiments on the crater’s rock layers with its on-board lab.

Get Ready for Mars Landing TONIGHT: Live Video and Top 3 Links

Prepare yourselves fellow space enthusiasts. The long-awaited Mars landing of NASA's Curiosity rover is upon us! The latest projections put the exact time of touchdown at 10:30pm PST tonight — 1:31am for folks on the East coast.

As (we hope) most of you already know from our Associate Producer Lindsey's post earlier this week, SCIENCE will be airing a spectacular recap of the mission and its results the day after the landing. Don't forget to tune in for Mars Landing 2012 at 10PM e/p on Monday night.

For those who want to watch history in the making tonight, NASA is making live video of the entire touch down available live on their NASA TV site. The real time coverage starts tonight at 8:30pm PST / 11:30pm EST.

Producer's Take: Mars Landing 2012

As NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory prepares for and executes one of the most complex Mars missions ever, SCIENCE is excited to bring you coverage of this prolific event on Monday, August 6th @ 10:00pm e/p.

If all goes according to plan — and that's a BIG if — scientists aim to discover whether or not Mars has, or ever had, the chemical building blocks to support life. In case you can't tell by a large portion of our programming dedicated to space, we geek out over this kind of stuff! 

Using a combination of field reporting, hosted interviews and informed news updates, Mars Landing 2012 will focus exclusively on the science and technology involved in bringing this mission to life. The show will feature scientists, technicians and big picture thinkers — those who have dedicated their careers and passion to this project.

Our hosts will be on location at the Jet Propulsion Lab in the hours after the Curiosity rover touches down on the surface of Mars. History will be made on August 6th, whether the landing mission is successful or not, and SCIENCE will be there with a full crew to provide coverage.

Check out this sneak peek of Mars Landing 2012. And don't forget to watch on Monday at 10PM e/p!