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A new company called Earth-i has announced it will be launching a constellation of satellites into Earth's orbit that will download "fast-turn-around pictures and colour video of the planet's surface."

The Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 that crossed the United States garnered international attention. Here in Canada we were treated to a beautiful partial solar eclipse, and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum attracted thousands of visitors to watch. Here NASA has published some of the ways the eclipse was watched, from the ground and from space. My favourite is the above picture because it has the Sun, which is 150 million kilometres away, the Moon, which is 400,000 kilometres away, and the

A full re-examination of the Kepler Space Telescope's data has revealed an additional 10 new planets that are near-Earth size and in their host-star's habitable zone. Even more interesting, follow-up studies on all of the rocky planets discovered by Kepler (thousands) to-date show that smaller planets come in two sizes. They are either 1.5 Earth Radii and smaller, or 2 Earth Radii and larger. The Kepler Space Telescope held its primary data collection from 2009 to 2013. The total number of

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest location in the known universe: it measures at roughly 2 degrees colder than empty space! This nebula is the result of the death of a red giant star, and the extreme temperature is caused by the rapid expansion of the nebula. According to thermodynamics, if you expand a gas you, cool a gas (just try using one of those compressed air cans for cleaning electronics). However, according to astronomers, a single star's death could not account for a strong enough

The Curiosity rover has been on Mars since 2012, and has contributed much to our understanding of the Martian environment in the past and present. In 2016, NASA performed a routine wheel examination to keep track of the wear and tear of the wheels. Cracks and holes are starting to appear in the gaps between the treads. After 5 years into this mission, it's not a surprise the wheels have started to wear, however, NASA wants to squeeze as much time out of them as possible. In March, they uploaded

NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has begun its final mission phase, making its first dive between the planet Saturn and its rings. It is the only craft to ever make that plunge. Check out some of the amazing images it took as it went through, including the north pole hexagonal vortex.

Human's have been launching satellites into space since 1957, and now the current number of objects in orbit larger than 10 cm is about 23,000. The growing number poses a real threat to the future of space exploration. Humanity will need to solve this problem moving forward, and ideas are currently being discussed.