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Category: space

China is intensifying its push into space, and broadening its astronaut recruiting.

The Chinese government, which plans to increase the number of manned missions in its military-backed space program to around two a year, will soon begin recruiting civilian astronauts, Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told reporters on the sidelines of a ceremonial parliament session this weekend. That’s a departure from China’s practice of drawing its astronauts from among air force pilots.

Yang—who was China’s first man in space in 2003—said the trainees could include private-sector maintenance engineers, payload specialists, pilots, scientists, and people from universities and other research institutions, according to the Associated Press. More women are also being encouraged to apply. The loosening of restrictions comes amid NASA’s announcement that it has recruited America’s most competitive class of astronauts ever, as well as other initiatives like Canada’s Hunger Games -style search for new astronauts on the internet.

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“To have the opportunity to talk to someone like that and to show what we did, it feels great,” said participant Ruby Novoa Forcier, 18.

Saint-Jacques’ visit was part of the Robotics FIRST (Favoriser l’Inspiration et la Reconnaissance des Sciences et de la Technologie) Quebec competition.

Around 5,000 students from different schools across Quebec, the United States and Europe got the chance to compete at the event.

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However, the pattern seems clear, and is worth heeding by other nations: despite China’s reputation for authoritarian and hierarchical rule, in science the approach seems to be to ensure that top researchers are well supported with funding and resources, and then to leave them to get on with it.

Chinese investment is paying off with serious advances in biotech, computing and space. Are they edging ahead of the west?

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Google Cloud and AGI (a.k.a. Analytical Graphics Inc.) have gotten on board with the B612 Asteroid Institute to develop a cloud-based platform for keeping track of asteroid discoveries.

The two companies have become technology partners for the Asteroid Decision Analysis and Mapping project, or ADAM, which aims to provide the software infrastructure for analyzing the trajectories of near-Earth objects, identifying potential threats, and sizing up the scenarios for taking action if necessary.

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T he first light which ever shone in the universe has been detected by astronomers scouring the skies for the earliest stars.

Using a simple radio antenna positioned in the quietest place on Earth — the western Australian desert — scientists picked up a signal of the long-sought ‘cosmic dawn.’

The breakthrough was described as ‘revolutionary’, ‘trailblazing’ and the most important discovery in astronomy since the detection of gravitational waves in 2015.

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A s was the case in January, there are two full Moons in March, one on the 2nd and one on the 31st.

The second full Moon in a month has popularly become known as a Blue Moon even though this is not the original definition. That stated a Blue Moon was the third full Moon in a season which contained four full Moons.

The occurrence of two full Moons in January followed by two in March takes place approximately four times every century.

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