April 2014

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket (Image NASA TV)

A few hours ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft blasted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in its CRS-3 (Cargo Resupply Service 3) mission, also known as SPX-3. This is the third of 12 missions that include the sending of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with various cargos and then return to Earth, again with various cargos.

Tomorrow, Saturday, April 19, 2014 the NBA playoffs 2014 are starting. The end of the regular season is always a little complicated because there are teams who are looking to rest their stars, others that need to win their playoffs berth and still others just waiting for the end of the season to think about the next one. For the first time in the NBA history the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks have all failed to reach the playoffs. This year the injury situation was quite complicated for some of the likely protagonists of the post-season with consequent ups and downs.

Part of Saturn's ring showing the disturbance at their outer edge caused by Peggy (Photo NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The Cassini space probe has detected an object at the edge of the planet Saturn’s outermost ring, the one called ring A, that could be a new moon. Informally called Peggy, it may be just forming, a small block of ice with a diameter of less than one kilometer (about half a mile) detectable only by the slight gravitational disturbance that caused on the ring.