Mars One's 705

Mars One has cut its pool of potential Mars colonists from 1,058 to 705 from about 200,000 original applicants.  The number will be whittled down further over the next few years.

Mars One intends to begin the human colonization of Mars in the next decade.

Drilling On Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into its third rock on Mars, going 2.6 inches deep.  This rock is a different color than the first two drilled into, so NASA hopes it will yield different information.

Curiosity's suite of scientific instruments will analyze the samples gathered by the drilling in the days ahead.

Greenhouse On Mars?

NASA is considering adding a small greenhouse to its next Mars rover mission, scheduled to land on Mars in 2021.  The experiment would test how Earth plants would do under Martian conditions that involve high radiation levels and only about 40 percent of Earth normal gravity.

The experiment would be the first step towards the huge greenhouses necessary to provide food and oxygen for the human colonization of Mars.

Ukraine

The crisis in Ukraine seems to be deepening.  Kiev has taken military action against "pro-Russian separatists," and lives have been lost.   Russia has a substantial military force amassed on the Ukrainian border and is threatening to cross that border to protect ethnic Russians.

How much escalation of the Ukraine crisis the U. S.-Russia space partnership can stand is unclear, but if Russia openly, militarily intervenes, we have to assume all bets will be off.

Another Close Shave

An asteroid about 25 feet long which was discovered just two days earlier flew inside the Moon's orbit yesterday.

As astronomers find more asteroids, they find more whizzing very close to Earth.  This one posed no threat to our world, but one will eventually.  Planetary defense needs to be somewhere on politicians' lists of priorities.

Life On Ganymede?

Astronomers have thought for a while that Jupiter's giant moon Ganymede had a subsurface ocean of liquid water.  A new study suggests the moon might also have a rocky ocean floor.

That's significant because chemical reactions between liquid water and a rocky surface may lead to life.

Very Short Day

Astronomers have been able to measure the length of day of an exoplanet.  It's a short day.  It's also a huge world.  At ten times the mass of Jupiter, a day on this world is only about eight hours long.  By comparison, a day on Jupiter is a bit more than nine hours long.

That's not all.  The exoplanet seems to be very young-- maybe only 20 million years old-- and astronomers think the day there will get even shorter.