Space, Astronomy, Astronaut, NASA News from Kepea

SPACE.com - GOP presidential primary candidate Newt Gingrich has promised a manned moon base by 2020 if he is elected, yet such a plan will face some serious budgetary and practical hurdles, experts say.

SPACE.com - NASA unveiled its first online space trivia game today (Jan. 30), a Facebook app that allows multiple players to compete for cosmic bragging rights.

SPACE.com - A recent eruption from the sun was so strong it was felt by NASA's Mars-bound Curiosity rover en route to the Red Planet. 

SPACE.com - As the sun heads toward its 2013 maximum, the corresponding increase in space weather may temporarily strip the radiation belts around Earth of their charged electrons. But a new study of data recorded by 11 independent spacecraft reveals that the deadly particles are blown into space rather than cast into our planet's atmosphere, as some scientists have suggested.

SPACE.com - A new commercial space venture sponsored by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has broken ground on a California production facility to build a giant mothership for private rocket launches.

SPACE.com - A trio of once-secret U.S. spy satellites built to look down on the Soviet Union were unveiled in Ohio on Thursday (Jan. 26) in a rare public display by the United States Air Force.

ContributorNetwork - The space shuttle Challenger explosion on Jan. 28, 1986, with its seven-member crew was the most traumatic disaster of its type in history. It occurred before a live audience, broadcast around the world in real time.

SPACE.com - The International Space Station fired its thrusters Saturday (Jan. 28) in order to steer clear of orbital debris from China's 2007 anti-satellite test.

ContributorNetwork - COMMENTARY | Apparently the moon is the next prime real estate for U.S. citizens, or so former Speaker of the House and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich seems to think.

SPACE.com - A century's worth of astronomical photographic plates have revealed a slew of new variable stars, many of which alter on timescales and in ways never before seen.