Lake Vostock, a body of water concealed under 2.2 miles of ice in Antarctica has been contacted by Russian researchers who began drilling for it more than two decades ago. The subglacial lake has not been touched in over 20 million years.

What is found under the ice, could very well inform how we look to explore more exotic locales beyond Earth.

Many scientists see Vostok as not only a last frontier on Earth but also a potential gold mine for learning about possible conditions on Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Encedadus. Each is covered by a thick shell of ice with liquid water below, warmed by either the inner heat of the moon or by tidal forces.

The United States and Britain will begin drilling later this year into small subglacial Antarctic lakes. Scientists estimate that there are about 200 of these lakes beneath the ice sheet.

The breakthrough comes after worries that the Russian team might have been in trouble after they did not respond to colleagues in the United States in the days leading up to the discovery.

[Washington Post]

There is no reason all newly discovered planets shouldn’t immediately be given science fiction inspired names. None at all. It would be easier for scientists to remember and reference, capture the imagination of those that find this kind of stuff awesome and create a cultural touchstone between us and our dreams for an exciting and adventurous future.

Take for example the newly discovered GJ 667Cc, it’s right in the middle of the “Goldilocks” zone making it a huge candidate to play host for liquid water and life as we know it.

Quote UC Santa Cruz astronomer Steven Vogt…

“The planet is around one star in a triple-star system,” Vogt explained. “The other stars are pretty far away, but they would look pretty nice in the sky.”

You mean like this?

Just think of it as a really convenient place to put our pod races and slave-owning racist caricatures. In 3D!

Then again, it might al still be a trap.

“Statistics tell us we shouldn’t have found something this quickly this soon unless there’s a lot of them out there,” Vogt said. “This tells us there must be an awful lot of these planets out there. It was almost too easy to find, and it happened too quickly.”

You’re right, it did happen too quickly. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. That’s no possibly habitable planet, it’s a space station!

[Scientific American]

New findings by a Russian scientist may in fact prove that there is life on Venus, and we aren’t talking microscopic organisms in the soil either.

But in his article, published in the magazine Solar System Research, Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a “disk,” a “black flap” and a “scorpion.”

“What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus?” he wrote. “Let’s boldly suggest that the objects’ morphological features would allow us to say that they are living.”

Scorpions on Venus! Are they giant? Do the breath the acidic gas cloud cover that envelops the planet? What do they eat?

This is the coolest idea in the history of Mondays.

[Yahoo]

The first private craft set to dock with the International Space Station will have to wait a little longer. An unmanned capsule to be launched by WeirdThings’ favorite SpaceX will not happen on February 7th as initially planned. The delay is attributed to additional preparation time.

“We believe that there are a few areas that will benefit from additional work,” said Kirstin Brost Grantham, a spokeswoman for the company, also known as SpaceX.

“We will continue to test and review data. We will launch when the vehicle is ready,” she said.

The flight will be the second and possibly last test flight before privately owned SpaceX begins delivering cargo to the station under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Considering the critical nature of such an early flight and what it means for private exploration in general, it’s probably better to be safe than sorry. Still, those anxious for SpaceX to continue its evolution will have to sit tight.

[Reuters]

If you listened to the most recent podcast, Andrew discussed the Phobos Grunt. It was supposed to be a probe that landed on the Martian moon of Phobos and sent us back soil samples, due to arrive in 2014. Instead, it’s going to be a REALLY expensive firework this Sunday as it burns up upon reentry after failing to break the Earth’s orbit.

C’mon, show em what your worth.

As it sinks into the denser layers of Earth’s atmosphere, the probe will heat up and begin to glow brightly, forming a long plasma tail and resembling “a surreal-looking comet,” Molczan said.

“Eventually, the combination of extreme heat and rapid deceleration will cause it to fragment into many pieces that will spread out along the path of descent,” he said.

“The debris trail will move rapidly across the sky, visible for perhaps one to two minutes, assuming [a viewer has a] reasonably unobstructed view of the sky.”

With a keen eye, you can even see it now circling Earth, ready for the big moment. Keep your peepers trained for a fast-moving, star-like object with a bright orange hue.

[Nat Geo]

Listen folks, let’s face facts. Space stuff is trying to get all up in our atmosphere all the time. Most of it burns up on the way in but some actually makes it to the surface of our precious Earth.

It would be really nice if we knew more about where it was coming from.

NASA would love to track all of it but they are busy setting up playlists for their new radio station don’t have the time.

Enter: you! Yes, amateur sky watcher you can help send valuable data to NASA and help track new meteor showers by downloading the new Meteor Counter app for iOS. You simply find a place likely to see some meteor action, lie down and use the intuitive interface to rate how bright each streak is. The time, date and location are immediately beamed back to NASA.

Pretty sweet, huh? Download the free app today.

[Meteor Counter App via Cult of Mac]

HBO’s suburb hockey documentary series 24/7 debuted last night. It will cover the behind the scenes action of the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers in the lead up to their outdoor game on New Year’s Day.

But the real star of the show, and buzz of today’s sports blogosphere, is Ilya Bryzgalov. The loopy Flyers net minder got his Sagan on and decided to explain the universe. Wide eyed, fascinated and peppered with English-as-a-second-language idiosyncrasies, it’s a pretty awesome way to spend 40 seconds.

He later went on to describe the penalties for killing a tiger in China. Namely: the death penalty. Which is hilarious. And coincidently, also 100% true.

24/7: The Road To The Winter Classic airs Wednesdays on HBO.

[Pro Hockey Talk]

UPDATE: Two key points missed in the initial post. First, this will indeed the largest plane ever built. Second, the rockets launched into orbit will be built by Weird Things darlings SpaceX.

Paul Allen and Burt Rutan have teamed up once again to send a plane into low-Earth orbit. Although this time, it’s on a bit grander scale.

Stratolaunch Systems will revolve around massive 1.2 million lb. planes using six 747 engines requiring 12,000 foot runway to bring the bird up to low orbit. It would then be capable of launching a rocket and landing back on Earth, therefore maximizing cost effectiveness and launch flexibility.

It’s also freaking gigantic. Seriously. Look at this thing.

They hope to launch within five years.

“We have plenty and many challenges ahead of us,” said Allen at the press conference today. “But by the end of the decade…Stratolaunch will be putting spacecraft into orbit [and will] give tomorrow’s children something to search for in the night sky.”

It’s a good thing we stopped dreaming…

[CNET]

Get door to door from London to Sydney in under three hours, one hour 45 minutes of flight time to be exact, and you get to call yourself an astronaut when you land.

That is the dream of Michiel Mol. The 42-year-old Dutchman who co-owns the Force India F1 team has announced that he hopes to send commercial travelers into sub-orbital space via rockets to drastically cut down travel time between destinations.

“It’s the first time a spaceship will be capable of doing four flights a day and of doing 5,000 flights with one engine,” he said.

Passengers, who will be entitled to call themselves astronauts if they reach an altitude of 100 kilometres, will be required to pass physical tests which he says are no more stringent than would be expected of an air steward. The first generation spaceship will travel at 2,200mph, but the second generation will need to reach a velocity of 13,750mph to achieve the desired orbit.

The breakthrough is expected to bring unexpected new relevance to the lyrics of Elton John’s “Rocket Man”.

[Perth Now]

At a National Press Club luncheon today, Elon Musk, head of SpaceX announced plans for a reusable rocket that could dramatically lower the cost of going into space by a factor of 100. By amortizing the hardware costs over a lifespan of 1,000 launches, the capital costs per launch would be $50,000 (plus $200,000 in fuels costs and support). He compares the goal of the rocket to achieve the same level of reliability as a 747.

SpaceX envisions a three stage rocket where each stage returns to Earth via powered flight, as opposed to crashing into the ocean or burning up in the atmosphere.

In a speech that outlaid his goal of seeing humanity becoming an interplanetary species, he explained the need for this technology to help humanity make a permanent settlement on Mars. Musk suggested the cost of such a trip could eventually fall to the price of an ‘average California home’.

SpaceX

Click the image below for an awesome animation of their space flight mission profiles:

Listen now

Along with announcement for an Elon Musk appearance at the National Press Club, SpaceX revealed new conceptual images laying out their vision for the future of spaceflight.

One image gives us our first look at what is probably the ‘Grasshopper’ reusable vertical take-off and landing rocket that SpaceX sought permission from the FAA to test at their McGregor field launch facility.

For more images, including the Dragon capsule doing a landing, check out the SpaceX page.

Those ambitious folks at SpaceX aren’t going to let American enterprise sit out the new space race. They’ve requested permission to test out a vertical take-off and landing rocket system at their test site in McGregor, Texas.

Although building on existing systems, like their Merlin engines, this is a new area of space flight for them. Previously they’ve focused on the more traditional approach of single-use rockets.

Recently, Jeff Bezos backed Blue Origin, tried a similar test, which ended in a crash after attaining 45,000 feet of altitude.

Both programs are very similar to the McDonnell Douglas DC-X single-stage vertical take-off and landing program which was abandoned in the 1990′s.

The FAA document

via SpaceRef.com and NasaWatch.com

Thirsty?

Astronomers have discovered a reservoir containing 140 trillion times the amount of water in all the Earth’s oceans, making it the largest mass of water ever detected in the universe.

“The environment around this quasar is unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” Matt Bradford, a Caltech visiting associate and NASA scientist said in a press release. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.”

Thanks to Weird Things reader Jason for sending this in.

[Huffington Post]

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

They call them hot Jupiters. A series of gas giant planets in far off solar systems that appear to circle their star in two very peculiar ways. First, it swings perilously close. Second, a quarter of them seemingly do it backwards compared to the normal orbit behavior.

But how the so called “flipped hot Jupiters” come to be is fascinating. In essence they begin like our own Jupiter, as a gas giant further out in the solar system. At some point, they come in contact with a larger planet whose orbit is so similar it eventually begins to “interact tidally”:

This tidal squeezing is like friction, dissipating energy and causing the planet’s orbit to shrink.

Sometimes, while this process is happening, the orientation of planet’s orbit can be shifted so it’s not in the same plane as the other planets. Occasionally, the orbit can be changed so much it completely flips around.

“We saw this for the first time because we did the calculation much more carefully than people had ever done before,” Rasio said. “The basic physics is just Newtonian mechanics. All of that comes out naturally of simply calculating these very tiny gradual changes that build on.”

Emosewa.

[Space]

Elon Musk’s Space X promised a big announcement today and it was the unveiling of the Falcon Heavy. The short list of features: it can put 100,000 – 120,000 lbs. in orbit, has the thrust capacity of 15 Boeing 747s combined, is 30% the cost of previous rockets of this size, meets NASA requirements for human transport, can do the a trip to the ISS, moon or Mars(!!!) and back AND is ready to launch by the end of 2012.

Musk:

“Falcon Heavy would be capable of launching people as soon as we’ve proven it out with a few launches,” Musk said. “It opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as a mission to the moon or conceivably even Mars,” he said.

“First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014,” Musk said.

M-A-R-S. Mars.

[Fox News]