Musk On Mars

Elon Musk says he intends to announce his plan for colonizing Mars later this year,

Musk also said the plan calls for a large spacecraft to be used, not the Dragon capsule.

Kepler Reaches 1,000

With the announcement of eight more discoveries this week. NASA's Kepler probe has pushed the number of known exoplanets to 1,004.

Of those eight, some are good candidates to support life.

Mining The Moon

A new study looking at lunar natural resources finds there is no one resource that would make mining the Moon profitable in the short term, but over the long term lunar mining would be economically viable.

Of course, a healthy lunar economy would not be based solely on mining.  It would take advantage of the Moon's other attributes, as well-- low gravity, lack of atmosphere, abundant solar energy.

Launch Delay

SpaceX aborted its Falcon 9 launch this morning due to an issue with the rocket's second stage.

The company expects to try again January 9.

VG Will Go On

Sir Richard Branson has publicly stated Virgin Galactic will continue to develop its spaceflight business.

VG suffered a setback last October when an accident during a test flight killed one pilot and injured another.

Life In The Universe

A new study speculates that life could exist even on worlds in eccentric orbits around red dwarf stars,

The more we learn, the more we need to expand our concept of habitability.

86 Stars

SETI researchers have scoured the neighborhood of 86 stars identified by NASA's Kepler spacecraft as having worlds capable of supporting life for possible intelligent radio signals,

No such signals were detected, but the night is young.