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.

Northeast Megalopolis Meteor

The east coast was abuzz last night, and it wasn't just the stunning upset in this year's NCAA basketball tournament. Around 8PM on March 22nd, skygazers noticed a large, vibrant light in the sky. While many speculated about this fireball, Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office confirmed to the Associated Press that the flash was likely a "a single meteor event."

Sightings were recorded from North Carolina to Massachusetts, with the highest concentration based in the northeast corridor. Unlike the Russian meteor one month earlier, there were no reported injuries from this event. While it was exciting for those who witnessed the meteor, just how rare are such sightings?

Morgan Freeman Hosts Fundamental Physics Prize Ceremony

Earlier today in Geneva, Switzerland, Morgan Freeman presented world-renowned scientists at CERN the coveted Fundamental Physics Prize for their work researching the Higgs Boson.

It's been a big week for the team at CERN. On March 14th, the physicists confirmed that the subatomic particle discovered last summer definitely matches the characteristics of the God Particle. While their data confirms its existence, CERN physicists agree that there is a great deal left to learn from this particle.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela.

But before the CERN team gets back to work, it's time to celebrate their achievements. Watch as Morgan Freeman tours the CERN facilities before the ceremony!

Don't miss Through the Wormhole: Is There A God Particle tonight at 9PM on Science.

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:

 

Moving Millions of People to Mars?

One thing you have to love about Elon Musk is he loves to go big. In May 2012, his company SpaceX became the first private-sector outfit to send a spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station, and in October, his Dragon spacecraft became the first private craft to complete an actual cargo resupply mission to the station.  He's now in the process of developing the Grasshopper, a reusable space rocket--essentially, a 10-story tall vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, the sort of thing that we've previously seen only in 1950s sci-fi movies. In November, the Grasshopper  managed to rise nearly 20 feet, hover, and then touch back down on the launch pad at SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor, TX. 

But Musk has even more colossal ambitions. In March, he told BBC News that not only envisions that SpaceX will launch a manned mission to Mars by 2027, but says he's figured out how to get the cost of a round trip to the Red Planet down to $500,000 per person. (That may sound steep, but consider this: back in 2001, when Dennis Tito became the first space tourist to fly on a Russian spacecraft, it cost him $20 million just to go to International Space Station.) But that's not all. In late November, Musk set off a frenzy across the technosphere with a series of tweets, in which he revealed his vision for resettling millions of humans in a massive Martian colony.

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.

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Latest Celebrity Space Cadet: Sarah Brightman

 As rumored in Russia and now confirmed by the singer herself, top-selling soprano and Sarah Brightman, 52, plans to travel to the International Space Station, orbiting Earth 16 times and singing a song or two. Perhaps this one?...

In an apparent effort to push the limits of exhaustion, the trip, through space tourism company Space Adventures, will come after a world tour in 2013 and six months of training in Russia. Authorities have tested her and declared she's physically and mentally fit for the program.

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.