Weekly Links
Down to Earth
Skylab and Space Shuttle astronaut Paul Weitz has died at 85 years old.
The 2018 US Olympic Snowboard team will wear uniforms inspired by NASA spacesuits.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to invest $1 billion dollars in Virgin Galactic.
In Orbit
In rocket news, there were only two orbital launches since my last post on October 21:
- October 30 – SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket to GEO carrying a commercial satellite, and successfully recovered the first stage
- October 31 – Orbital ATK launched a Minotaur-C rocket carrying 10 satellites for the Earth-imaging company Planet
Around the Solar Systems
NASA’s robotic probe Dawn has received an official mission extension to stay in orbit around the asteroid Ceres.
Out There
Astronomers at an observatory in Chile have discovered an unusual exoplanet orbiting a dwarf star. The planet is larger than Jupiter and is 25% the size of its host star, the highest known planet-to-star ratio yet discovered.
The Pan-STARRS-1 observatory in Hawaii detected a small rocky body hurtling into our solar system from interstellar space. The asteroid (or should it be called something else?) poses no risk to Earth. Follow the link for a cool animation of its orbit.