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Giveaway/raffle, WIN a FREE telescope! We will select one winner and give away a Celestron 21035 70mm Travel Scope: And help support our effort launch a satellite!

To enter the UGA Small Satellite Research Lab’s giveaway all you have to do is:

Reblog this post (so we can get your name)

Liking the post will enter you a second time!

Following the small sat lab on tumblr will enter you a third time!

Following the small sat lab on twitter will enter your a fourth time (just tweet your us tumblr user name at us and tell us how cool you think space exploration is)!

Help Our Crowdfunded to build a spacecraft! Help us build a spacecraft!

We’re Crowdfunding a satellite! Donate at SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!

We’ll be sending a Satellite to the international Space Station in 2018! We just need help building the ground station!

The Donation Rewards:

If you have donated larger amount you will also get all the benefits of the lesser amounts! Be sure when you visit smallsat.uga.edu/donate that you include your information so that we can get in contact with you!

$5 - You will entered in the telescope raffle 2 more times and will receive a signed thank you card in the mail from the lab!

$10 - You will receive a signed certificate of space exploration from the UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory

$25 - You will receive a mission patch of your choosing (our NASA patch has yet to be designed but the MOCI patch is below)

$50 - You will receive both mission patches!

$100 - We will give you a UGA Small Satellite Laboratory tee-shirt! Special made for supporters of our campaign!

$250 - We will tweet at you from space! once a month! (or you can control the message that you send!)

$500 - You will receive a plaque commemorating your participation in the development of our spacecraft!

$1000 - We will engrave your name on the side of our satellite!

Remember, you get ALL of the benefits of lower donations if you donate a higher one!

Please Help Us Out! We are partnered with NASA and will be sending a satellite to the International Space Station in 2018, but we do not have the money to build a ground station yet!

We have 2 3U cube satellites! The image below is the patch for our Mapping and Ocean Color Imager (MOCI). We are also building the SPectroscopic Observatory of Coastal regions (SPOC), is this is the satellite that will be launched to the International Space Station!

Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!

The Crowdfunded and raffle end on July 31, 2016, after that it will take us 20-30 days to send out all the rewards! Donate at smallsat.uga.edu/donate! Feel free to message us or ask us any space questions you may have!

Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!

One of the renderings of our satellite:

The International Space Station is a floating science lab moving at 17,500 mph. 

Milky Way over the Pinnacles in Australia

(via APOD; Image Credit: Michael Goh )

NASA just saw something come out of a black hole for the first time ever!

You don’t have to know a whole lot about science to know that black holes typically suck things in, not spew things out. But NASA just spotted something mighty strange at the supermassive black hole Markarian 335.

Two of NASA’s space telescopes, including the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), miraculously observed a black hole’s corona “launched” away from the supermassive black hole. Then a massive pulse of X-ray energy spewed out. So, what exactly happened? That’s what scientists are trying to figure out now.

“This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare,” Dan Wilkins, of Saint Mary’s University, said. “This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe.”

NuSTAR’s principal investigator, Fiona Harrison, noted that the nature of the energetic source is “mysterious,” but added that the ability to actually record the event should provide some clues about the black hole’s size and structure, along with (hopefully) some fresh intel on how black holes function. Luckily for us, this black hole is still 324 million light-years away.

So, no matter what strange things it’s doing, it shouldn’t have any effect on our corner of the universe.