Lake Skadar - Montenegro and Albania Dark and light sediments swirl around in the center of Lake Skadar (also known as Lake Shkodra), the largest lake on the Balkan Peninsula. This pattern captured the attention of an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Lake Skadar is a karst lake that straddles the border of Montenegro and Albania. It is an example of a cryptodepression, where parts of the lakebed extend below sea level. The curved, spine-like ridges running parallel with the southern shore are part of the Dinaric Alps, which are comprised mostly of easily erodible rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and other carbonates. The swirling plume in the center of the lake is likely the mixing of sediment that has been transported downstream from higher elevations via snow-melt water and other mountain runoff. A major source of this sediment inflow comes from the Moraca River; its wide delta occupies much of the Montenegro shoreline. Smaller river deltas along the northern edges of the lake also contribute sediment. The Drin River and the Bojana River converge just south of the ancient lake-front city of Shkodër, which lies on the small delta of the Kir River. The lake and these rivers all ultimately drain into the Adriatic Sea. As with many large freshwater lakes near cities, many of the native plants and animals in Lake Skadar became endangered due to human activity. Montenegro has since made the western portion of the lake a national park, and Albania declared its section as a nature reserve. Both efforts were made to protect many species of birds, microorganisms, and aquatic life, including eels, snails, and endemic fish species. Astronaut photograph ISS062-E-40353 was acquired on February 21, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a 400 millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 62 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.

Watch history unfold on Saturday, May 30, as NASA and SpaceX launch astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station. This mission marks the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 that humans will fly to the space station from U.S. soil. The mission's first launch attempt on Wednesday, May 27 was scrubbed due to weather conditions. Tune in starting at 11 a.m. EDT as NASA and SpaceX provide joint, live coverage from launch to arrival at the space station. Teams are targeting 3:22 p.m. EDT for the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon is scheduled to dock to the space station on Sunday, May 31.

Rafting Tara River is magnificent and has attracted tourists from all over the world. Mystical beauty of this river makes you speechless. A Canyon, the deepest and the longest in Europe, the second one in world is still undiscovered jewel in the heart of the Old Continent. Rafting Tara is not an adventure that can be taken for granted, especially on Tara River, which is recognized as one of the best in the world for rafting alongside to Colorado or Zambezi rivers. In May 2009, Tara River hosted the World Rafting Championship, which suggests the capacity of our local beauty. Read More about Rafting Tara. https://www.tararafting.com/

Space Mysteries: For decades different discoveries have been linked to a single possible spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin. Sometimes the introduction of a news report will stop you in your tracks, forcing you to reread in fear you didn't quite grasp its point the first time. That was certainly the case when Mail Online published a story on Mar. 21, 2017: "An alien satellite set up more than 12,000 years ago to spy on humans has been shot down by elite soldiers from the illuminati, UFO hunters claim." And with that, the conspiracy surrounding the so-called "Black Knight" satellite appeared to be very much alive. Related: 9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet It's been 120 years since conspiracists believed the existence of the Black Knight was recorded. Those who subscribe to the theory lay claim of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in near-polar orbit of the Earth, although they draw upon evidence so disparate that it's not entirely clear why people link them. What they amount to, however, is an intriguing set of ingredients that, taken together, cause people to scream loud about potential cover-ups by NASA and the government. In that sense, it is a legend that refuses to go away. For more here: https://www.space.com/what-is-the-black-knight.html

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto years before he ever attended college! Clyde Tombaugh was born in 1906 to an Illinois farm family. As a boy he developed an interest in stargazing that was encouraged by both his father and his uncle. The first telescope Clyde ever looked through belonged to his uncle. The first telescope he ever owned was bought from Sears. By 1925, Clyde was dissatisfied with his store bought telescope and decided to build one for himself. Clyde's father took a second job to pay for the materials needed to build it. The telescope Clyde built in 1925 was only the first of more than thirty telescopes he was to build over his lifetime. In 1928 Clyde completed the construction of a very accurate 23-centimeter reflector. The mount for this telescope was built from part of the crankshaft from a 1910 Buick and discarded parts from a cream separator! Nevertheless, it was with this telescope that Clyde made the observations responsible for a job offer from the Lowell Observatory. Clyde made very detailed drawings of his telescopic observations of Jupiter and Mars. He sent the drawings to astronomers at the Lowell Observatory asking for their comments and suggestions. What he received instead was an offer to come to Lowell to work as a junior astronomer. Clyde accepted the job and joined the search for Percival Lowell's "Planet X", a planet beyond Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh's job was to photograph one small piece of the night sky at a time. He then had to carefully examine and compare the photos in an effort to detect an unidentified moving point of light that might be a planet. Clyde Tombaugh photographed 65% of the sky and spent thousands of hours examining photographs of the night sky. After ten months of very hard work, sometimes working through the night in an unheated dome, Clyde Tombaugh discovered an object he named Pluto. For many years, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in our solar system. However, as astronomers learned more about the planets and also about a new group of objects known as the Kuiper Belt Objects, it became clear that Pluto was more like the objects in that belt than the other eight planets. In August 2006, Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet...

Clyde Tombaugh was born in 1906 to an Illinois farm family. As a boy he developed an interest in stargazing that was encouraged by both his father and his uncle. The first telescope Clyde ever looked through belonged to his uncle. The first telescope he ever owned was bought from Sears. By 1925, Clyde was dissatisfied with his store bought telescope and decided to build one for himself. Clyde's father took a second job to pay for the materials needed to build it. The telescope Clyde built in 1925 was only the first of more than thirty telescopes he was to build over his lifetime. In 1928 Clyde completed the construction of a very accurate 23-centimeter reflector. The mount for this telescope was built from part of the crankshaft from a 1910 Buick and discarded parts from a cream separator! Nevertheless, it was with this telescope that Clyde made the observations responsible for a job offer from the Lowell Observatory. Clyde made very detailed drawings of his telescopic observations of Jupiter and Mars. He sent the drawings to astronomers at the Lowell Observatory asking for their comments and suggestions. What he received instead was an offer to come to Lowell to work as a junior astronomer. Clyde accepted the job and joined the search for Percival Lowell's "Planet X", a planet beyond Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh's job was to photograph one small piece of the night sky at a time. He then had to carefully examine and compare the photos in an effort to detect an unidentified moving point of light that might be a planet. Clyde Tombaugh photographed 65% of the sky and spent thousands of hours examining photographs of the night sky. After ten months of very hard work, sometimes working through the night in an unheated dome, Clyde Tombaugh discovered an object he named Pluto. For many years, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in our solar system. However, as astronomers learned more about the planets and also about a new group of objects known as the Kuiper Belt Objects, it became clear that Pluto was more like the objects in that belt than the other eight planets. In August 2006, Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet. Clyde Tombaugh died at the age of ninety on January 17, 1997. This man’s grave is over four billion miles from Earth. Surprisingly, being “buried” in space isn’t unique. Since Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry did it in 1992, around 450 people have followed suit, requesting that a small portion of their cremated remains be launched into the great unknown. There are even companies dedicated to space burial, including Elysium and Celestis. Tombaugh, however, has taken the longest postmortem flight of anyone, coming within 7,800 miles of Pluto in July 2015. New Horizons is still cruising through space as we speak, and is currently over four billion miles from Earth. In a 2015 interview with NASA, Tombaugh’s daughter Annette said, “I think my dad would be thrilled…When he looked at Pluto, it was just a speck of light.”

It will cost up to $ 250,000 to hope to have a seat SPATIAL TOURISM – It will cost up to $ 250,000 to hope to have a seat The craze is such that the company of tourism space Virgin Galactic has decided to return seats to the market. The company, which plans to send its first customers to thespace by summer 2020, has more than doubled its bookings since late September and now has 7,957 people on its waiting list. A loss of $ 72.7 million Virgin Galactic, however, had stopped formally selling tickets after its first try in space in December 2018. But after registering 603 firm reservations from 60 countries at a price of up to $ 250,000 per ticket, the company continued to receive numerous requests. The company is therefore now preparing to offer for sale a new series of seats from Wednesday, each aspiring astronaut having to pay a deposit of 1,000 dollars. Management also disclosed on Tuesday that it had revenue of $ 529,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019, for a loss of 72.7 million. Over the year, the group lost a total of $ 211 million. Virgin Galactic was down more than 7% in electronic trading on the New York Stock Exchange. But the decline remains relatively moderate as just a few months after arriving on Wall Street, the company founded by Richard Branson in 2004 has become one of the most prominent actions. At the close it was still up 195% from the start of the year. Virgin Galactic competes directly in its niche with Blue Origin, the company founded by the boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.

Mysterious radio signals from space have been known to repeat, but for the first time, researchers have noticed a pattern in a series of bursts coming from a single source half a billion light-years from Earth. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don't repeat. But repeating fast radio bursts are known to send out short, energetic radio waves multiple times. And usually when they repeat, it's sporadic or in a cluster, according to previous observations. Between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019, researchers with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment/Fast Radio Burst Project collaboration detected a pattern in bursts occurring every 16.35 days. Over the course of four days, the signal would release a burst or two each hour. Then, it would go silent for another 12 days. The findings are included in the pre-print of a paper on arXiv, meaning the paper has been moderated but not fully peer reviewed. The authors of the paper are part of the CHIME/FRB collaboration, which has published a multitude of fast radio burst studies in recent years. The signal is a known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 180916.J0158+65. Last year, the CHIME/FRB collaboration detected the sources of eight new repeating fast radio bursts, including this signal. The repeating signal was traced to a massive spiral galaxy around 500 million light-years away. Researchers hope that by tracing the origin of these mysterious bursts, they can determine what caused them. So far, they have traced single and repeating fast radio bursts back to very different sources, which deepens the mystery. The first repeating fast radio burst traced, FRB 121102, linked back to a small dwarf galaxy containing stars and metals. FRB 180916 was traced to one of the spiral arms of a Milky Way-esque galaxy. It was also within a star-forming region of the arm, the researchers said. Now, the evidence of a pattern in the signal adds to the question of what could cause these bursts to emit the way that they do. "The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object," the researchers wrote in their study. In the paper, the researchers consider the possible causes, like the orbital motion of a star or an object that acts as a companion in the outskirts of the galaxy. The authors of another paper, who consulted with the researchers who discovered the pattern, suggest the cause could be coming from a neutron star and early OB-type star binary system. Neutron stars are the smallest in the universe, the remnants of supernovae. Their diameters are comparable to the size of a city like Chicago or Atlanta, but they are incredibly dense, with masses bigger than that of our sun. OB-type stars are short-lived hot, massive stars. The interaction between these two, and the wind coming off of the OB-type star, could factor into the cause of the repeating FRB's pattern. Understanding fast radio bursts can also help astronomers learn more about the universe itself. The more bursts they can trace, the better they may be able to use the signals to map how matter is distributed across the universe. The researchers believe that future observations could help them determine if other repeating fast radio bursts have a pattern. That way, they'll know if this kind of periodicity is the exception or routine behavior.

Scientists have studied a binary star system for years and claim it will explode The supernova explosion is 'boldly' predicted for 2022, give or take a year If they are correct, it will be the first time anyone has predicted a supernova Will be one of brightest star in the night sky when it appears, astronomers say Our night sky could be set to include a new star in 2022, if the predictions of a group of astronomers turn out to be correct. A professor who has been studying a binary star system, two stars orbiting each other, claims they will soon start to merge together to create what he has dubbed 'Boom star'. The stars will end their lives in an explosion, known as a supernova, he says. This will be will make them ten thousand times brighter than they already are - producing one of the brightest stars visible in our sky. Supernovas are intense explosions caused at the end of the lifetime of huge stars, or when two stars merge together. They can be seen from Earth from millions of light years away, but they are unpredictable. Historically they have can only been studied if telescopes happened to be pointing in their direction, and by astronomers looking back at archives of the stars' observations, after the event. Professor Larry Molnar from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, claims to have predicted one in advance, for the first time. He says the event will take place around 2022, give or take a year. The star will be visible as part of the constellation Cygnus, and will add a star to the recognisable Northern Cross star pattern. 'It's a one-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion,' said Professor Molnar, about his bold prediction. 'It's never been done before.' Professor Molnar's exploration into the star known as KIC 9832227 began back in 2013. He was attending an astronomy conference when fellow astronomer Karen Kinemuchi presented her study of the brightness changes of the star, which asked whether the star was one star pulsing, or flashing, or whether it was two stars orbiting each other. A student Daniel Van Noord, Professor Molnar's research assistant, was also at the conference. He decided to make some observations of the star with the Calvin observatory in order to answer the question. 'He looked at how the colour of the star correlated with brightness and determined it was definitely a binary,' said Professor Molnar. 'In fact, he discovered it was actually a contact binary, in which the two stars share a common atmosphere, like two peanuts sharing a single shell. 'From there Dan determined a precise orbital period from Kinemuchi's Kepler satellite data (just under 11 hours) and was surprised to discover that the period was slightly less than that shown by earlier data' Professor Molnar continued. After studying the star, the astronomers noticed similarities between its behaviour and that of another star, V1309 Scorpii, that unexpectedly exploded in 2008. Looking back at the record of the star before its explosion showed a contact binary with an orbital period decreasing at an accelerating rate, which has also been happening to the new star. For Professor Molnar, this pattern of orbital change was a 'Rosetta stone' for interpreting the new data. He first proposed KIC 9832227 may be following in the footsteps of V1309 Scorpii in January 2015. Since then, he has ruled out other explanations for the change in orbital period. 'Bottom line is we really think our merging star hypothesis should be taken seriously right now and we should be using the next few years to study this intensely so that if it does blow up we will know what led to that explosion,' said Professor Molnar. Professor Molnar and colleagues will be observing KIC 9832227 in the next year over the full range of wavelengths: using the Very Large Array, the Infrared Telescope Facility, and the XMM-Newton spacecraft to study the star's radio, infrared and X-ray emission, respectively. 'If Larry's prediction is correct, his project will demonstrate for the first time that astronomers can catch certain binary stars in the act of dying, and that they can track the last few years of a stellar death spiral up to the point of final, dramatic explosion,' said Matt Walhout, dean for research and scholarship at Calvin College. 'The project is significant not only because of the scientific results, but also because it is likely to capture the imagination of people on the street,' said Walhout. 'If the prediction is correct, then for the first time in history, parents will be able to point to a dark spot in the sky and say, 'Watch, kids, there's a star hiding in there, but soon it's going to light up.'

The newly created United States Space Force has new uniforms to match. The unit's official Twitter account posted a picture of the new "U.S. Space Force" nameplate and "United States Space Command" patch and said the uniforms had "touched down in the Pentagon." The US Space Force has been in the works of President Donald Trump's administration since March 2018, and it was officially created alongside the US Space Command when the president signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on December 20. Space Command is meant to oversee space operations using personnel and assets managed by the Space Force. Trump's initiative has been criticized by former astronauts and a former top military official, but it also has its supporters, including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. "Space Force" trended on Twitter after the Department of Defense debuted the new uniforms, with many tweets poking fun at the camouflage print. Some users questioned why a black print wasn't chosen, given the environment that space troops would theoretically be fighting in. However, others pointed out that there are no immediate plans to put space troops in space, so the uniforms will be worn by people still on Earth – and camouflage doesn't have to serve an actual camouflaging purpose, it has just became the traditional print for US military members. "Folks blabbering on out about not needing camo in space is peak civilian," freelance journalist and Navy veteran Shelley Carbone tweeted. "Not everyone is going to be floating around up there, people." The Space Force isn't intended to put combat troops into space, and it's separate from NASA. Trump described space as the "world's newest warfighting domain," but as of right now there's no space aggression threatening US space assets. The exact division of responsibilities between Space Force and Space Command will be determined over the next 18 months, according to Air Force officials. The United States Space Force didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The newly unveiled logo for US Space Force appears to have boldly gone where Star Trek went before. Twitter users noted that the emblem, revealed by President Donald Trump, bears an uncanny likeness to the insignia from the cult sci-fi TV series. The striking resemblance left many critics as stunned as though they had been zapped by Captain Kirk's phaser. But others online insisted the logo was really based on the US Air Force One. The intergalactic controversy comes after mockery erupted last week when it emerged Space Force troops would wear woodland camouflage uniforms. Unveiling the insignia on Friday, Mr Trump tweeted: "After consultation with our Great Military Leaders, designers, and others, I am pleased to present the new logo for the United States Space Force, the Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military!" George Takei, star of the original 1960s Star Trek TV series, tweeted archly in response.

Axiom Space will provide at least one habitable module to help spur commercial activity in orbit. The International Space Station (ISS) is taking a big step toward increased commercial use. NASA has picked Houston-based company Axiom Space to build at least one habitable private module that will be attached to the orbiting lab, the space agency announced Monday (Jan. 27). NASA hopes the Axiom module helps spur the growth of an off-Earth economy, one that eventually extends far beyond the ISS in both time and space. "Axiom's work to develop a commercial destination in space is a critical step for NASA to meet its long-term needs for astronaut training, scientific research and technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. "We are transforming the way NASA works with industry to benefit the global economy and advance space exploration," he added. "It is a similar partnership that this year will return the capability of American astronauts to launch to the space station on American rockets from American soil." Bridenstine was referring in that last sentence to NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which has funded the development of two private crew capsules, SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner. The agency is counting on these homegrown astronaut taxis to end American reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets and spacecraft to get folks to and from the ISS. Bridenstine has stressed that NASA wants to be just one of many customers for Starliner and Crew Dragon. The agency's vision is similar for these vehicles' destinations: If all goes according to plan, a variety of private companies, university groups and other customers will take advantage of the ISS and other outposts that eventually set up shop in Earth orbit. These other outposts are key, for the ISS won't last forever. Indeed, the station is currently funded only through 2024 (though operations could end up being extended through 2028, or perhaps even later). Axiom aims to build and operate its own space station in the near future, as do several other companies, including Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace. Bigelow already has some hardware attached to the ISS — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which arrived at the orbiting lab in April 2016 to validate the company's expandable habitat technology for crewed in-space use. BEAM has performed very well during its nearly four years in orbit, NASA officials have said, and the agency plans to keep it on the station (and use it for storage) through the late 2020s. The Axiom module will be affixed to the ISS' Node 2 forward port, NASA officials said. The main goal is to demonstrate the module's commercial potential and aid the transition toward greater private use of the orbiting lab — a key agency priority — and the final frontier in general. Axiom's winning proposal was submitted in response to a call via Appendix I of NASA's Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) 2 Broad Agency Announcement, which offered companies the use of ISS utilities and a port. "NASA and Axiom next will begin negotiations on the terms and price of a firm-fixed-price contract with a five-year base performance period and a two-year option," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "Because commercial destinations are considered a key element of a robust economy in low-Earth orbit, NASA also plans to issue a final opportunity to partner with the agency in the development of a free-flying, independent commercial destination," they added. "Through these combined efforts to develop commercial destinations, NASA is set to meet its long-term needs in low-Earth orbit well beyond the life of the station."

The launch is now set for Sunday (Jan. 19) at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT). SpaceX is now aiming to its Crew Dragon in-flight abort test flight today, Jan. 19, at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT). Read our full story on the delay here. You can watch the launch live in the window above, courtesy of NASA TV. NASA's webcast will begin at 9:40 a.m. EST (1440 GMT). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the uncrewed capsule from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a 6-hour launch window that opens at 8 a.m. EST and closes at 2 p.m. EST (1300-1900 GMT). SpaceX has moved the launch later into the window due to bad weather at the launch site and at Crew Dragon's recovery zone in the Atlantic Ocean.

It's the award no one wanted to win: 2019 was the second hottest year on record, government scientists confirmed yesterday (Jan. 15). That's according to two separate analyses: one conducted by NASA and one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Each study compared 2019 Earth temperature data with scientists' historical records, which begin in 1880. Of those 140 years, only 2016 was warmer than last year; the analyses also show that the five hottest years on record have been the five years beginning in 2015. "The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said in a statement. "Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before." According to NOAA's temperature report, 2019 was also the 43rd year in a row that saw above-average global land and ocean temperatures. That analysis, like the similar one conducted by NASA, is based on data gathered by more than 20,000 stations around the world. Temperature increases aren't the only climate upheaval that the federal government's scientists have been tracking. A second NOAA analysis, released on Jan. 8, found that, in the U.S., 2019 was also the second wettest year on record, with only 1973 seeing more precipitation. The same NOAA report also tallied weather- and climate-related disasters that cost the country $1 billion or more. The U.S. experienced 14 such events in 2019, including wildfires in California, flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, tornadoes in the south, and tropical storm Imelda in Texas and Hurricane Dorian on the Atlantic coast. Those events add to a decade that saw more such expensive disasters — adjusted for inflation — than the previous decade. The connections between severe-weather events and broader climate changes are complex, but the findings speak to the increasing extremity of weather on Earth. Temperature changes, including average global surface temperature increases, are just one facet of these changes, and the most easily tied to a cause. "We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit [over 1.1 degrees Celsius] warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back," Schmidt said in the statement. "This shows that what's happening is persistent, not a fluke due to some weather phenomenon: we know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."