The New Year ahead of us promises to be an exciting one for those of us on Discovery Enterprise and the associated blog sites Cosmic Visions and Far Future Calling. This New Year of 2009 AD promises to be one of many New Beginnings in the exciting world of Discovery, Exploration and Science.Many of our devoted readers know that we at Discovery Enterprise are closely associated with the Atlantica Expeditions - First Undersea Colony Project. At this very moment the Atlantica Expeditions Team is assembling the New Worlds Explorer (NWE) and it will be nearing completion this weekend. The New Worlds Explorer, designed by Dennis Chamberland, is designed as a companion habitat and engineering model to the Leviathan Habitat, scheduled for construction soon. Both habitats will be used to support underwater crews on the longest manned underwater mission in history in 2010. The New Worlds Explorer is scheduled for deployment in 2009. As for other news – it looks like the submarine Dan Scott Taylor II will be delivered in January! It looks like it is going to be a busy and eventful year as the Atlantica Expedition crew embarks on its quest to commence humankind's exploration and settlement of the last great frontier on Earth - the Undersea World of Aquatica.
The year 2009 also marks the celebration of four major anniversaries connected to the History of Science and Exploration. 2009 marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth on 12th February, 1809 and the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of “On the Origin of Species” on 24th November, 1859. The year 2009 will also mark the 400th anniversary of the use of the telescope to view the heavens by Galileo Galilei and the publication of Johannes Kepler's Astronomia Nova in which he presented his three laws of planetary motion. In connection with these events the year 2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy.
Moreover, it will also commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1st landing by human beings on the moon's surface on July 20th, 1969. This year will also see the launching of the Kepler Mission on March 6th, 2009 an astronomical satellite currently being developed by NASA to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. It will observe the brightness of over 100,000 stars over 3.5 years to detect periodical transits of a star by its planets.
And on July 11th, 2009 will see the test launch of the Ares I-X which will be a suborbital test flight in of the Ares I spacecraft. This will be the first major step, in NASA’s ambitious plans to return to the Moon, with the eventual goal of establishing a permanent human presence there. So stay with us dear readers and join us on new voyages of exploration and discovery during the exciting year ahead.
