With the strides SpaceX is making, people don't realize how we've suddenly ended up on the fast-track to space tourism and everyday people getting to leave the planet, for fun.
The company is expanding, developing many new ideas, and rethinking things. Elon Musk has announced plans for a nearly nine-fold increase in the capacity of the
Falcon 9 rocket. We can't wait to see what future uses of SpaceX have in store.
Imagine the possibilities if you can visit space for the day. There's been a lot of positive attention from the press so I think you're going to start to see some of that among everyday people who want to get to know the Earth and to orbit other places.
For example, the Comet ISON amateur telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, should find the comet's atmosphere on November 12 and send a paper back to Berkeley. From that data, atmospheric scientists will look for the comet's molecular characteristics such as its molecular weight and element abundances. That will help determine how long it takes to form a given amount of an icy material.
"Over the course of our lifetime, what we're hoping to see is that the comet's nucleus develops into a complex, porous structure," said Susan Sullivan, the instrument scientist on ISON at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"It could form thin patches that would subsequently pull in larger materials. The detailed image of the nucleus could reveal structures within it that were unknown before the flyby."
"NASA has collected many observations over the last ten years of this comet. We have learned what's happening with the nucleus" she added. We have also learned a lot about its activity because this comet has had a very long lifetime in the field of view, including about 10 years.
We are going to get more data in the near future, and we're hoping to gain even more insights.
