A team of scientists at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom have been studying an ancient star which has been named Kepler-444 after NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission. Around Kepler-444 are sighted five ancient rock worlds orbiting it. Since the proximity of the exoplanets to the star keep them out of the habitable zone, it is highly unlikely that there is any life present on them at present.

However when you consider that just how old this solar system is, all kinds of questions pop up. The age of the system is roughly established at 11.2 billion years old which is two and half times older than our own solar system’s age. Now the main point to ponder is that in all this time while the solar system developed, did life form there and move away when the orbits became  inhospitable?

Did that life survive more than 11 billion years somewhere else? In fact can life survive that long at all? And also if there is such an old solar system just being discovered by human beings, does that not mean that even older systems, with the possibility of surviving life on them them, can be discovered by researchers in the future? Makes for an interesting science project!

Meteor Showers are a spectacular night time vision where you can see a large quantity of debris from space entering the atmosphere of the Earth and burning up before anything substantial can reach the lower levels of the atmosphere. They often occur when a comet passes close by and loses some of its tail to the gravity of the planet.

The sight is similar to a fireworks display which can be enjoyed from the ground. Unfortunately not everyone can predict when the next meteor shower will occur with a great deal of accuracy. So you have to be really lucky to catch one, and that is why a Japanese firm has come up with this idea of getting a meteor shower on demand.

A Japanese start-up company by the name of ALE hopes to tie up with numerous universities to create the artificial meteor showers, which will cost around $8,100 per meteor for buyers. They are planning to use a chemical mixture packed into tiny, inch-wide balls that will be ejected from a satellite at a predestined time to form the on demand meteor shower.

Now this is a science project that would clearly excite any number of star gazers who would like to compare the artificial shower with the real deal. It will be interesting to see just how successful ALE is with this project.

The International Space Station crew consisting of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka, must have been relived to  receive the robotic Russian resupply ship, Progress 60 after the mid air explosion of Falcon9. The irony is that the last two cargo missions have been failures for the Russians while SpaceX has been consistently getting it right for the last six resupply missions using Falcon9 and Dragon.

Don’t get worried about the crew members too much, as even if the resupply missions fail they are currently stocked up for all essentials until October 2015. Plus they are just a skeletal crew of three on board as of now, as opposed to the full strength of six that the International Space Station is supposed to house. There are plans to send up three more crew members this July 22.

Cargo missions usually bring in food, water, fuel and other supplies needed by the crew. The next resupply mission is to be handled by Japan who will send in the H-2 transfer vehicle freighter around August 16. Kelly and Kornienko have finished more than a quarter of their year long space mission which is supposed to be a scientific experiment to prepare for the much longer journey to Mars that they one day hope to make.

This July 14th will see the culmination of a decade long science project for NASA as the spacecraft New Horizons flies past the planet Pluto. Pluto was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 and was recently demoted from planet to dwarf planet. This cold and distant planet has never been the source of so much excitement before.

People are planning “Plutopalooza” parties to celebrate the flyby as NASA makes it their business to popularize the event. They have even released a two and half minute long video entitled “The Wait” which is set to a song called ‘Renegades” sung by the X Ambassadors.

The New Horizons mission which was launched in January 2006 and has cost an estimated $700 million has allowed humans to finally study Pluto. A planet which has been just too far, considering its 300 billion mile distance from Earth, to be studied with any degree of comprehension.

Pluto is just one of many denizens of the Kuiper Belt, the ring of frigid bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. So New Horizons’ observations should help researchers better understand an entire realm of little-known worlds, mission team members from NASA have said.

Should this science project be successful there may be another fly by to look forward to in the year 2019 when the funds are provided for an extended mission. The Kuiper Belt is soon going to be sharing many secrets with human beings.

Many children look up into the night sky and wonder what it would be like if they could fly among them. What space travel would entail and could they really become astronauts? It may seem like glamorous work with a world of adventure to look forward to, but as the Falcon9 rocket from SpaceX recently proved, there is always a risk with heading out into space.

SpaceX has a contract worth $1.6 billion with NASA to run 12 resupply runs to the International Space Station. It has been using the Falcon9 rocket and Dragon capsule in the last six successful attempts. However in end June the seventh run was a disaster as it exploded within 3 minutes of the rocket being launched. There is still no news of what the investigation into the event has revealed.

The theory is that an over pressure event in the rocket’s upper stage liquid oxygen tank is what caused the accident to occur. No conclusive evidence has been forthcoming as yet. Till the root cause of the accident is identified SpaceX has grounded Falcon9.

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, is highly optimistic that the problem will soon be traced and the Falcon9 will soar once more. The future of this science project is watched with bated breath by the entire scientific community.

In an unforeseen disaster, the SpaceX rocket headed for the International Space Station with considerable cargo, exploded about 3 minutes after blast off. The rocket known as Falcon9 was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last month on the 28th. Thankfully it was an unmanned rocket and no human lives were lost, still the effect on the company is likely to be substantial. This was the seventh contracted resupply flight that SpaceX was undertaking on behalf of NASA to restock the International Space Station.

The Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that they took these missions very seriously, and obviously this was a huge blow to SpaceX. The company is investigating the rocket failure and will not be launching any new rockets till it completes the investigation and finds out the reason for the disaster. Musk added that their goal was to have the most reliable rockets ever as soon they were even planning to have manned flights.

Charles Bolden who is the agency administrative from NASA said that the failure of Falcon9 should not deter the company from its space flight program. He said that SpaceX had demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first six cargo resupply launches. This is one science project that has NASA’s full support as they pull their act together.