In Celebration of the 50 year anniversary since humans walked on the moon, I am posting this so you can add your name to the Mars Rover Mission in 2020 and send your name to Mars.

Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names — stenciled on chips — to the Red Planet with NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which represents the initial leg of humanity’s first round trip to another planet. The rover is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, with the spacecraft expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021. Click below to add your name.

Get your ass to Mars!

Lemur is a test exploratory robot that can scale cliffs such as the ones on Mars and possibly the Moon. Check out the video below of some testing. Pay attention to those cool grasping feet.

Here is the official JPL/Nasa info on this bot:

Robots can land on the Moon and drive on Mars, but what about the places they can't reach? Designed by engineers as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a four-limbed robot named LEMUR (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot) can scale rock walls, gripping with hundreds of tiny fishhooks in each of its 16 fingers and using artificial intelligence to find its way around obstacles. In its last field test in Death Valley, California, in early 2019, LEMUR chose a route up a cliff, scanning the rock for ancient fossils from the sea that once filled the area. 

The LEMUR project has since concluded, but it helped lead to a new generation of walking, climbing and crawling robots. In future missions to Mars or icy moons, robots with AI and climbing technology derived from LEMUR could discover similar signs of life. Those robots are being developed now, honing technology that may one day be part of future missions to distant worlds.

Here is a very interesting article by Michael Brooks over at New Scientist titled "We've seen signs of a mirror-image universe that is touching our own." 

New experiments are revealing hints of a world and a reality that are complete reflections of ours. This mirrorverse may be able to solve the mystery of the universe's missing dark matter.

By Michael Brooks

AT FIRST glance, everything looks familiar. The clock ticks placidly on the wall, cars motor along outside your window, the story you are reading has the same eye-catching pictures. But something is wrong. The clocks are running backwards. Cars are driving on the wrong side of the road. The article you are reading is written back to front. Suddenly, it clicks. You are looking at your own reflection.

The uncanny world on the other side of the mirror may not seem real to you. But Leah Broussard thinks parallel universes where everything is flipped might be very real indeed. Along with her colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, she is on the hunt for a universe that is identical to our own, but flipped so that it contains mirror atoms, mirror molecules, mirror stars and planets, and even mirror life. If it exists, it would form a bubble of reality nestling within the fabric of space and time alongside our own familiar universe, with some particles capable of switching between the two.

After decades of tantalizing hints about its existence, the first experiments aiming to go through the looking glass are about to get under way. Finding such a mirror universe would not only transform our view of reality, but could also answer questions about our own universe that have puzzled scientists for decades. “The implications would be astounding,” says Broussard.

Physicists have found new worlds before. In 1928, Paul Dirac realized that the equations of quantum mechanics allowed for the existence of particles …

Read more here:

Strange earth organisms have survived for almost 2 years outside the International Space Station against heat, cold, radiation and more. If life can survive here, surely it can survive on Mars or any other planet. Maybe you've read about this, maybe not, either way it's very interesting in terms of what it means for future space exploration. 

Full Article Here.

The original Godzilla was created in 1954 and with it's success came an enormous amount of copycats and successors. 

Here are just a few with a link at the bottom to a massive collection of truly weird and somewhat creative creatures.

Not only is this dude extremely creepy looking, but slightly constipated. 

MORE CREATURES...

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has teamed up with Toyota to build a pressurized self-driving rover that will land on the lunar surface in 2029. The six-wheeled transporter will be able to carry two humans a distance of 10,000 kilometers using solar power and Toyota's fuel cell technology.

The rover is roughly the size of a motorhome and It will land on the moon before the human expedition arrives, using AI tech to travel independently to meet them. Check out the video below for more info.

The Gateway foundation is proposing a Von Braun Rotating Space Station. Here's a little back story if you don't know who they are. The Gateway Foundation was formed to build the first spaceport. To do that we must first build a few smaller structures. One of the most important projects is the Von Braun Rotating Space Station. This will likely be the first commercial space construction project in history.

Our plan includes developing a robust space construction industry, the first artificial gravity space station, and finally the Gateway.


These are important first steps to colonizing space and other worlds – The Gateway Foundation will connect people from all over the world so we can make this first step together.

The Von Braun Space Station

The Von Braun Station will be a rotating space station designed to produce varying levels of artificial gravity by increasing or decreasing the rate of rotation. The station will be designed from the start to accommodate both national space agencies conducting low gravity research and space tourists who want to experience life on a large space station with the comfort of low gravity and the feel of a nice hotel.

Check out the video below.