Astroblog: Carnival of Space #214

Carnival of Space #214

Welcome to the Downunder Edition of Carnival of Space 214

We have lots of good stories for you this week.

Near Earth:

The Space Show welcomes Dr. Jeff Bell back for a two hour plus discussion regarding the retirement of the space shuttle.
Gene Roddenberry's son tells Discovery News about how his father's vision inspires society, and Discovery News talks to Richard Obousy about how Star Trek inspired him to formulate the science behind the warp drive.
Cheap Astronomy chats to the Ordinary Guy from the Brains Matter podcast about astronomy, science and saving the world.
Vintage Space has a history of the real Apollo 18 mission.
The AIAA has posted the rules to this year's Cessna/Raytheon Missile Systems Student Design/Build/Fly competition.
This post from Vega00 explains how to create a time-lapse easily with VirtualDub [In Spanish]
The Next Big Future explains how Russia is trying to get its rockets flying again so that the Space Station does not have to be evacuated. They also describe how the Blue Origin rocket had a crash, but there are images of what the secret rocket looks like in flight. They they show Electric solar wind sail videos of components in operation. A 10 meter test tether should be sent to space in 2012.
The Meridian Journal talks about the new images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show the Apollo landing sites on the Moon in the greatest detail yet. So does Universe Today.
ZME science reports that the Royal Observatory gives out their annual awards for astronomy photography, and the pictures are amazing.

Solar System

Centauri Dreams ponders the possibilities of moving asteroids in their orbits, and wonders, as did earlier writers, whether it's a good idea, even if the windfall from mining could be immense.

Deep Space

Chandra Finds Nearest Pair Of Supermassive Black Holes.
The Next Big Future reports how the Kepler space telescope detected an exoplanet indirectly by detecting the gravitational effect on a visible exoplanet.
StarryCritters explores a protoplanetary nebula shaped like a starfish or dragonfly.
A transient Nova in Scorpius was discovered "twice" 92 mins apart by separate observers, interestingly it was brighter than the Supernova our northern cousins have been getting excited about, but appears to have faded slightly already. Details are still emerging about the discovery - Astroswanny has photos. It expected to be announced as a Type Fe II Nova.

Cosmos