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Crewed Spaceflight SpaceShip One

SpaceShipTwo’s test drive

SpaceShipTwoSpace passenger line Virgin Galactic tests the Burt Rutan-designed suborbital SpaceShipTwo spacecraft VSS Enterprise at an altitude of over ten miles, reaching a speed of over Mach 1. Virgin’s official report is that the test flight was a complete success; no date is set for a suborbital test flight yet. Virgin is expected to build four more vehicles of the SpaceShipTwo class before moving on to a more advanced design, SpaceShipThree.

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Arrowverse (DC) Television

Arrow: Sacrifice

ArrowThe 23rd episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. John Barrowman (Torchwood, Doctor Who) guest stars in the first season finale.

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Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station Soyuz

Soyuz TMA-09M

Soyuz TMA-09MPart of the 36th full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-09M. Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano take up residence on the ISS for 166 days, becoming part of the Expedition 36/37 crews. Once again, a new “fast track” trajectory propels Soyuz from launch to docking at the ISS in under six hours. This crew returns to Earth in November 2013 aboard the same vehicle.

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Crewed Spaceflight Dream Chaser

Dream Chaser test vehicle on the runway

Dream ChaserA full-sized structural test article of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft begins “tow tests” at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, verifying the vehicle’s handling on landing gear after touching down. Drop tests and glide tests are scheduled for later in 2013, though all such tests will be completely automated. Sierra Nevada Corporation also provides the main engines for Virgin Galactica’s SpaceShipTwo, and had already built the engines that propelled SpaceShipOne toward its X Prize-winning flight. The Dream Chaser design is based on an unused study vehicle, HL-20, studied by NASA in the 1980s and ’90s, which was in turn based upon a Soviet-era test vehicle called BOR4.

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Doctor Who Television

Matt Smith reveals Doctor Who departure

Matt Smith as Doctor WhoActor Matt Smith announces that he will be give up the role of the eleventh Doctor in the forthcoming Christmas 2013 Doctor Who special, handing the TARDIS off to the twelfth actor to play the Doctor. First announced as the eleventh Doctor early in 2009, Smith has occupied the TARDIS since his first appearance in the closing scenes of 2010’s New Years’ Day special The End Of Time Part 2.

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Crewed Spaceflight Shenzhou Tiangong

Shenzhou 10

Shenzhou 10The Chinese manned space mission Shenzhou 10 lifts off, carrying taikonauts Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping to the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory module for a stay of over two weeks. This is the fifth manned flight in the history of the Chinese space program, and the second (and is expected to be the last) to visit Tiangong-1. A larger orbital station, Tiangong-2, is under development.

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Herschel Uncrewed Spaceflight

Herschel Observatory decommissioned

Herschel Space ObservatoryThe European Space Agency officially shuts down the Herschel Space Observatory, having exhausted the unmanned orbital telescope’s remaining fuel supply with a maneuver to push it safely out of Earth’s L2 LaGrange point, opening that part of space up for future missions. Herschel’s science observations had ended when its supply of helium coolant, required to keep its instruments super-cooled to detect distant objects at the far-infrared end of the spectrum, ran out in April. Its replacement, the Gaia Space Observatory, is already being prepared for launch by ESA later in 2013.

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Deaths Matters of Life & Death

Richard Matheson, writer, dies

Richard MathesonSF/horror/fantasy author Richard Matheson dies at the age of 87. His novels and short stories have been fodder for Hollywood for over half a century, including I Am Legend (which, in addition to the Will Smith adaptation, had also been translated into The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man, and is often credited as a primary influence in zombie fiction), What Dreams May Come, Somewhere In Time (inspired by the story “Bid Time Return”), A Stir Of Echoes and Duel (which inspired a TV movie which was Steven Spielberg’s first major directorial effort). Matheson also wrote episodes of The Twilight Zone (including Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, which was remade for Twilight Zone: The Movie), Star Trek (The Enemy Within), Amazing Stories, The Outer Limits and The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler (the pilot movies for what became the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker). Other movies inspired by his work included Trilogy Of Terror and The Box.

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Astronomy Science & Technology

Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons named

P4 and P5Two tiny, recently-discovered satellites of dwarf planet Pluto have new named ratified by the International Astronomical Union; P4 is renamed Kerberos and P5 is renamed Styx. The names – related to the “underworld” theme that has governed the naming of Pluto and its moons to date – overlooks a popular online vote that suggested one of the moons should be named Vulcan, after Mr. Spock’s home planet in Star Trek. Kerberos, discoverd in 2011, is believed to be approximately 20 miles in diameter and orbits Pluto at a distance of roughly 37,000 miles. Styx, first sighted in 2012, is even smaller, with an estimated diameter of 15 miles, orbiting only 1,200 miles from Pluto, making it the innermost satellite (a distinction previously held by Pluto’s near-twin, Charon). NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will have the opportunity to see the new moons up close when it does a flyby of Pluto in 2015.

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Hubble Space Telescope Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight

The raining shards of the blue planet

HD 189733bScientists, analyzing Hubble Space Telescope spectographic data taken during a transit of the exoplanet HD 189733b against its parent star, reveal that they have determined the planet’s color in visible light. The doomed gas giant, only 63 light years away, is said to be a “deep azure blue” not unlike how Earth’s oceans appear from space, though in this case the color is theorized to be the result not of water, but of silicate rain – airborne glass – blowing in 7,000mph winds as the atmosphere is blasted away due to the planet’s proximity to its sun.

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Hubble Space Telescope Uncrewed Spaceflight

Hubble finds undetected moon of Neptune

Neptune + moonsUsing Hubble Space Telescope images of Neptune taken between 2004 and 2009, astronomers discover a 14th moon circling the outermost planet of the solar system. Not given an official, mythologically-derived name yet, the moon is initially designated S/2004 N1, and is a small, dark body with a diameter of roughly 12 miles, making it Neptune’s smallest discovered satellite to date, orbiting the planet once a day at a distance of 65,400 miles.

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Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station

Water washes out ISS spacewalk

ISSA two-man spacewalk outside the International Space Station is called off when water begins collecting inside the helmet of astronaut Luca Parmitano’s spacesuit. Originally scheduled as a six-and-a-half-hour maintenance spacewalk, the EVA is called off at one hour and the astronauts make a hasty return to the airlock. Once inside, an estimated half liter of water is found inside Parmitano’s space helmet; the remainder of the tasks scheduled for this spacewalk are rescheduled for a later EVA.

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Doctor Who Television

Peter Capaldi is the Doctor

Peter CapaldiIn a live half-hour reality-show-style special broadcast simultaneously around the world, the BBC reveals that actor Peter Capaldi will be the twelfth incarnation of the last Time Lord in Doctor Who. Capaldi has already appeared in the series once (in 2008’s The Fires Of Pompeii) and in the third season of the spinoff series Torchwood. At the age of 55, Capaldi is the oldest actor to play the Doctor since William Hartnell, and represents a significant departure from his youthful precessor, who is leaving the TARDIS at the age of 30. Capaldi’s first Doctor Who episodes will not be seen until 2014.

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Astronomy Geosciences Science & Technology

Mega-eruption on Io

IoAstronomers using the Keck Observatory’s Hawaii-based telescopes and near-infrared cameras capture an image of a devastating volcanic eruption on Io, one of Jupiter’s largest moons (and known since 1979 to be very volcanically active). The eruption, unleashing enough molten material to reshape hundreds of square miles of Io’s surface, also reveals that the material erupted is hotter than any eruption in Earth’s recorded history. This is the most violent eruption seen to date in the solar system, and caps off two weeks of intense activity observed by the astronomers.

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Deaths Matters of Life & Death Odyssey Video Games

Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo president, dies

Nintendo FamicomThe president of Nintendo through the latter half of the 20th century, Hiroshi Yamauchi, dies at the age of 85. Having dropped out of college to assume control of Nintendo from his ailiing grandfather in 1949, Yamauchi transformed the company from a maker of playing cards into a power player in the electronic game market, even though Nintendo’s first video game product was a licensed version of the American-made Magnavox Odyssey. Twice, Yamauchi boldly decided to break into the American video game market with no guarantee of success: once with the arcade game Donkey Kong, and again with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, even after a Stateside licensing deal with Atari fell through at the last minute, depriving the NES of Atari’s existing marketing and distribution channels.

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Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station Soyuz

Soyuz TMA-10M

Soyuz TMA-10MPart of the 37th full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-10M. Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazansky and Michael Hopkins take up residence on the ISS for 166 days, becoming part of the Expedition 37/38 crews. Use of the recently developed “fast track” trajectory resumes, taking Soyuz from launch to docking at the ISS in under six hours. This crew returns to Earth in March 2014 aboard the same vehicle.

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Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station

Cygnus arrives at International Space Station

CygnusOrbital Sciences’ unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft is grappled and docked to the International Space Station via remote manipulator arm. This demonstration model of the Cygnus cargo ship had been launched ten days earlier via Orbital Sciences’ Antares booster from Wallops Island, Virginia. With 1,300 pounds of crew supplies, experiments and other cargo aboard, the Cygnus vehicle is expected to remain attached to the station for a full month before being jettisoned to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

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Arrowverse (DC) Television

Arrow: City Of Heroes

ArrowThe 24th episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chornicles) guest stars in the second season premiere.

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Juno Uncrewed Spaceflight

Juno visits home one last time

Earth as seen by JunoBound for planet Jupiter in 2015, the unmanned space probe Juno swings past Earth to catch a gravity assist boost from its home planet. Launched in 2011, Juno slips past Earth at a distance of only 350 miles, boosting its speed to 93,000 miles per hour relative to the sun, fast enough to cross the distance between Earth and its moon in three hours (by comparison, the Apollo manned missions of the 1960s took three days to make that trip). But as it comes out of Earth’s shadow, Juno goes into a failsafe mode to protect the spacecraft against an unanticipated fault. Juno is brought back online within two days as it continues on the final leg of its flight to Jupiter.