We all had to memorize that cute mnemonic solar system device in grade school that taught us the order of the planets. Some of us even had Milky Way placemats. But for most of us, the outer space education ended there. (Sorry guys: “Star Trek” and Star Wars don’t count.) Maybe that’s because space feels too distant to ever be relevant to our day-to-day routines. Or maybe it’s simply that the otherworldly element generally overwhelems us and bruises our intellectual egos. But maybe it’s time to start paying attention to space again. Hell, Lance Bass and Paris Hilton went there. How complicated can it be? As those who have kept in touch with the cosmos will tell you, space is one damn interesting place, chock-full of wacky phenomena. And you don’t even need to work for NASA to understand it. In fact, if you ever find yourself stranded in space like the rag-tag crew of Earthlings in our hilarious original retro SciFi series, “Space Hospital”, you might have a lot of fun getting to know the weird ins and outs of the final frontier. Here’s a collection of interesting and altogether weird space facts that you probably didn’t learn in school or even on TV. So sit back, strap in, and get ready to go where few normal men have gone before. 2010-03-10T22:32:33Z 206 2010-03-10T22:32:33Z http://blog.koldcast.tv/2010/koldcast-news/15-strange-things-about-outer-space/ China plans to launch its third unmanned probe to the moon, Chang'e-3, around 2013 and expects to complete the three-phase moon mission in 2017, an official said here Wednesday. The remarks by Ye Peijian, chief designer of Chang'e-1, the country's first moon probe, and chief commander of Chang'e-2 and Chang'e-3, followed presentations by two space exploration experts last week. The Chang'e-3 mission will include an unmanned soft landing on the moon and the release of a moon rover to prospect the surface and interior of the moon, Ye told Xinhua on the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, China's top political advisory body. Ye, also a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said the Chang'e-3 mission has made "good progress" in its prototype development stage and he believed the mission would be carried out as scheduled after overcoming a variety of difficulties. 2010-03-10T22:01:21Z 205 2010-03-10T22:01:21Z http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-03/10/c_13204901.htm NASA today unveiled an interactive computer simulation that allows virtual explorers of all ages to dock the space shuttle at the International Space Station, experience a virtual trip to Mars or a lunar impact, and explore images of star formations taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In an effort to excite young people about space and NASA's missions, the agency has launched the online Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) simulation, designed to entertain and educate. The interactive simulation offers a virtual 3-D experience to visualize how data travels along various space communications paths. "The elaborate space communications networks that connect scientists and engineers with NASA's spacecraft is essential to all of NASA's missions and can be a challenging concept to comprehend," said Barbara Adde, a policy and strategic communications manager for the Office of Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This simulation helps explain this complex infrastructure in an engaging way by using an interactive 3-D game." 2010-03-09T18:07:09Z 204 2010-03-09T18:07:09Z http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/mar/HQ_10-062_SCAN_game.html ROCKET engines could benefit from a natural Martian lubricant - but not to keep them oiled. A salty sludge that may be lubricating the ice caps of Mars could one day provide fuel. The ice is too cold to flow normally. But if winds were to carry salty soil particles to the ice cap, they might gradually sink to form a briny bed, kept liquid by the planet's warmth. This could allow the ice cap to flow like a glacier, say David Fisher at the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa, and colleagues. Such brine would freeze as it moved toward lower temperatures at the edge of the ice cap, forming a ring of concentrated salt. This could one day be mined as a component of solid rocket fuel, says Fisher. The team found that patterns in radar maps of layers in the ice cap made with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are consistent with flowing ice (Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI: 10.1029/2009je003405). However, the probe's radar has so far found no sign of brines, says Jack Holt at the University of Texas, Austin. "We could be missing something, but so far there is no evidence for anything wet at the base," he says. 2010-03-09T17:09:54Z 203 2010-03-09T17:09:54Z http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527505.100-mars-glacier-lubricant-could-fuel-rockets.html On Friday, Esa Alanen and family visited the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, as guests of ESA, to say thanks for relinquishing the Twitter name www.twitter.com/esa. When ESA went to open its Twitter account last year, the name was already taken. The ESA web team was stuck – ‘European Space Agency’ is too long for the Twitter character limit and no other name would do. It was time for some detective work and it was no surprise that the owner turned out to be a Finn: Esa is a common male name in Finland. Esa Alanen with his family in the Columbus laboratory "I took the account some years ago, because I needed it for my work," explained Esa, who works at Finnish telecom giant Nokia as product manager and follows all new social media channels as part of his work. "In fact, I was surprised to find that no other Esa had taken the account. Only later I realised that ESA existed and didn’t have that address." 2010-03-09T16:01:42Z 202 2010-03-09T16:01:42Z http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5I77K56G_index_0.html On Friday, Esa Alanen and family visited the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, as guests of ESA, to say thanks for relinquishing the Twitter name www.twitter.com/esa. When ESA went to open its Twitter account last year, the name was already taken. The ESA web team was stuck – ‘European Space Agency’ is too long for the Twitter character limit and no other name would do. It was time for some detective work and it was no surprise that the owner turned out to be a Finn: Esa is a common male name in Finland. Esa Alanen with his family in the Columbus laboratory "I took the account some years ago, because I needed it for my work," explained Esa, who works at Finnish telecom giant Nokia as product manager and follows all new social media channels as part of his work. "In fact, I was surprised to find that no other Esa had taken the account. Only later I realised that ESA existed and didn’t have that address." 2010-03-09T16:01:06Z 201 2010-03-09T16:01:06Z http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5I77K56G_index_0.html On Friday, Esa Alanen and family visited the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, as guests of ESA, to say thanks for relinquishing the Twitter name www.twitter.com/esa. When ESA went to open its Twitter account last year, the name was already taken. The ESA web team was stuck – ‘European Space Agency’ is too long for the Twitter character limit and no other name would do. It was time for some detective work and it was no surprise that the owner turned out to be a Finn: Esa is a common male name in Finland. Esa Alanen with his family in the Columbus laboratory "I took the account some years ago, because I needed it for my work," explained Esa, who works at Finnish telecom giant Nokia as product manager and follows all new social media channels as part of his work. "In fact, I was surprised to find that no other Esa had taken the account. Only later I realised that ESA existed and didn’t have that address." 2010-03-09T16:01:00Z 200 2010-03-09T16:01:00Z http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5I77K56G_index_0.html The deepest secrets of Mars's moon Phobos are set to be revealed, following a series of 12 fly-bys by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. Six have been completed, including the closest ever pass of the moon, at 67 km, last week. The flights will probe the moon's gravity better than ever before, revealing the distribution of material throughout its body. The MARSIS radar will also search for underground structures in the rubbly moon, which is probably riddled with caverns. The gravity data will help Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission, set to launch in 2011 or 2012, manoeuvre efficiently around the moon before coming in for a landing. New portraits of Phobos are also on the way. "Until now, the encounters have been on the [moon's] nightside," says ESA's project scientist Olivier Witasse. "This week we switch to flying by the daylight side, allowing the camera and spectrometers to begin working." That will give the moon's composition, testing the idea that Phobos formed from rocks that somehow found themselves orbiting the planetMovie Camera. 2010-03-09T15:01:03Z 199 2010-03-09T15:01:03Z http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18621-martian-moons-secrets-to-be-revealed-during-flybys.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=space The deepest secrets of Mars's moon Phobos are set to be revealed, following a series of 12 fly-bys by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. Six have been completed, including the closest ever pass of the moon, at 67 km, last week. The flights will probe the moon's gravity better than ever before, revealing the distribution of material throughout its body. The MARSIS radar will also search for underground structures in the rubbly moon, which is probably riddled with caverns. The gravity data will help Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission, set to launch in 2011 or 2012, manoeuvre efficiently around the moon before coming in for a landing. New portraits of Phobos are also on the way. "Until now, the encounters have been on the [moon's] nightside," says ESA's project scientist Olivier Witasse. "This week we switch to flying by the daylight side, allowing the camera and spectrometers to begin working." That will give the moon's composition, testing the idea that Phobos formed from rocks that somehow found themselves orbiting the planetMovie Camera. 2010-03-09T15:00:53Z 198 2010-03-09T15:00:53Z http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18621-martian-moons-secrets-to-be-revealed-during-flybys.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=space It seems like only yesterday that Burt Rutan flew SpaceShip One into near-orbit and received the Ansari X-Prize for piloting the first manned private craft into space. But it's been five years. Things have happened in the meantime. To be specific, SpaceShip Two, just unveiled. It's a much larger ship than the original, capable of carrying six passengers as well as two pilots. It has more windows. I like windows. A year or so ago the company, Virgin Galactic, had shown off their White Knight Two, a twin-fuselage aircraft designed to ferry SpaceShip Two high into the atmosphere. 2010-03-09T14:54:54Z 197 2010-03-09T14:54:54Z http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/004001.html