Solar flares are caused by the sudden release of magnetic energy stored in the Sun’s atmosphere and coronal mass ejection (CME), bursts of charged particles are released into space. This can interfere with technology on Earth, such as electrical power grids, communications systems and satellites – including satellite navigation signals.

Despite the negative effects, it can bring about a cool sighting of “Northern lights”, as was seen over Canada, Norway and UK this week.

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Credit: Moon Express

Space.com notes several space missions to look out for in 2012, including:
- Planetary Mission Milestones
- Space Station Gets New Additions
- Big Mars Rover Arrive at Red Planet
- LightSail-1: A New Solar Sail Mission
- NASA’s Grail Moon Probes

See their full list here.

1. Increase access to technology – We can’t expect students to join the workforce if they are not ready to work with current technology.

2. Provide alternatives to standard education – If a student can’t learn the concepts sitting in a 42-minute class there must be some other way to educate them.

3. Foster creativity – We are responsible for instilling in these future scientists the desire to discover and develop new technologies in the STEM fields. No discovery was ever made by someone who was satisfied with the status quo.

The private sector will be on the moon within the next 2 years, but to able to explore further we will need to develop new technologies. Within the next 15 years we will need to develop systems of production and manufacturing with off world capabilities. The work to this end has been started, but to finish it we are going to need a new generation of pioneers and thinkers. To be able to have a future without a ‘final frontier’ and to keep expanding how far we can explore, we need to start preparing the students of today to be the explorers of tomorrow.

Moon Express Lander

Even though it may seem that space exploration has taken a huge step back after NASA retired its shuttle program, the future might be a highly bright one thanks to privatized space programs. Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, Inc., is one of the couple of billionaires today who share a common vision – the future of private space capitalization. Jain’s idea, in particular, is that of bringing lunar landers and mining platforms to the moon. “People ask, why do we want to go back to the moon? Isn’t it just barren soil?” Jain said. “But the moon has never been explored from an entrepreneurial perspective.” He actually sees a lot of opportunities with lunar exploration, besides mining. “No one has ever captured people’s fascination with the moon,” he said. “What if, say, we take a picture of your family on the moon and project it back to you? Or take DNA up there?”

So far, this company Moon Express has already been awarded $10 million by NASA, part of the agency’s Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) program, and is also shooting for the $30 million put into play by Google’s Lunar X Prize. Jain, a self-made billionaire, is confident that by 2013 his company will commence the first mining operations on the moon. So far, MoonEx’s lunar lander successfully completed a flight test at the Hover Test Facility in NASA’s Ames Research Center.

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Credit: ALMA

The shot is a teasing glimpse of the capabilities of the Atacama Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope – this picture has been taken using only a quarter of the antennae it will have when it comes into full operation in 2013.

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Credit: NASA

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Credit: AGI

If you happened to be lucky enough to be within viewing range of a satellite that is re-entering the atmosphere, the sight, put simply, would amount to a short-lived but spectacular fireworks display. Unlike a fireball meteor, whose flight across the sky might take no more than a few seconds, a re-entering satellite’s path usually lasts much longer.

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Credit: NASA

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