A dramatic new chapter was opened in the more and more complicated history of BlackBerry Limited. The plan of acquisition by Canadian financial holding company Fairfax Financial failed, an alternative agreement was started that still involves Fairfax together with other companies and it a change of CEO was decided.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has just started with the launch from the Sriharikota base in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. After less than one hour, the space probe has successfully inserted in the orbit scheduled for the first stage of its mission.
MOM is the first attempt of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Indian space agency, to show the technology necessary to an interplanetary mission, meaning those needed to develop the spacecraft and its instruments, send it to another planet and manage the various stages of its journey communicating with it. The space probe is informally nicknamed Mangalyaan, which in Sanskrit means Mars craft.
The novel “The Weapon from Beyond” by Edmond Moore Hamilton was published for the first time in 1967. It’s the first book of the Starwolf trilogy.
Morgan Chane is a Starwolf who grew up on Varna, a high-gravity planet whose inhabitants develop a great strength, but he’s of terrestrial origin. In a brawl he kills another Starwolf and at that point he gets hunted by his former comrades, who want to kill him. Wounded, he can only hope for the help of the first spacecraft passing by but it has a crew of mercenaries.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the star Proxima Centauri, the closest to the Sun, using its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) instrument. It’s in the neighborhood in astronomical terms, just over 4 light-years from Earth, but generally its light is very dim. Occasionally, however, Proxima Centauri is particularly brilliant.
