Don’t throw away, recycle for another day

People are producing more and more waste every year. As a consequence recycling is now more important than ever. Nowadays almost everything can be recycled; plastics, metal, paper, clothes … On the 30^th of March, the first recycled spacecraft was even launched.

Usually, after a rocket has fulfilled its purpose, it falls back to Earth and burns away in the atmosphere or crashes somewhere in the ocean. But SpaceX, a company that designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, has developed a reusable rocket. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, pointed out that discarding the rocket was a waste of money and hard work. He wanted to develop a rocket that lands safely back on Earth after it has been in space and he has succeeded in doing so. Now rockets can be reused over ten times.

By reusing the rockets, the number of space launches done by SpaceX will increase greatly without having to enlarge the production of rockets. Therefore space travel will become a lot less expensive and a lot more accessible for companies who couldn’t afford it until now.

Moreover, recycling space crafts will decrease the amount of waste in our oceans and our atmosphere caused by crashed rockets. This is very positive for our environment, since the remains of those rockets lead to a lot of contamination of the ocean water and of the air we breathe.

This is a great message to all other companies and organisations involving all sorts of fabrications: don’t throw away, recycle for another day!

Link to the articles about the launch of the first recycled rocket: 
http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/opwinding-in-de-ruimtevaart-spacex-klaar-voor-eerste-lancering-tweedehands-raket-b716eb8a/
http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/spacex-lanceert-eerste-gerecycleerde-raket-ba04efaa/

Extraterrestrial life

Recently I read an article about a spacecraft from NASA, called Dawn. It found compounds of carbon on Ceres, the smallest dwarf planet in our solar system. These compounds are compatible with the building blocks for life on earth. 

Previously the spacecraft Dawn had found water on Ceres in the form of ice and almost certainly also in the liquid form.  Ceres is the biggest object that orbits around the sun in between Mars and Jupiter, and scientists have long been searching for a sign of life on Mars and also on several moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

The fact that those compounds of carbon are discovered, is very exciting, because this could signify that there is a chance of life on a planet other than earth. 

People have long been dreaming about extraterrestrial life, about green creatures on Mars who want to contact us or who try to kidnap us in their UFOs. I don’t believe this is possible, that there are any creatures like this, but I do believe that there could be another planet where there is life. Maybe not in the form that we know nor in any form that we could ever imagine. 

The fact that they found those compounds on Ceres is a great indicator that there also could be exoplanets where there is water or compounds of carbon. Exoplanets are planets that orbit around a star other than our sun. NASA and other organizations do a lot of research on exoplanets that are similar to Earth, where there is a chance of existence. And I like to believe that on some of these exoplanets there really is a form of life, but I can not imagine what it would look like.

Hopefully, some day, we will find out.

Link to the article about the discovery of carbon compounds on Ceres:
http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/dwergplaneet-ceres-bevat-alle-nodige-bouwstenen-voor-leven-b59e1886/