Following on from the BBC's program on commercial spaceflight, this small article tries to answer the question to whether we are nearing the "space tourism revolution", and what has been attempted to make commercial flights into space feasible.

It's rare that there's a huge tornado of high energy particles that create a cosmic "tornado" in the stars. But that's exactly what NASA have spotted from the Spitzer Space telescope.

The stars at night are a wonderful sight and it's here that NASA have caught the marvels of space in all its glory.

A young star (just off the top of picture) was shooting unnumerable high energy particles while this picture with taken. The "tornado" illusion was created after the particles steamed through interstellar clouds therefore making the sky glow with a huge range of colours.

The fluorescent tornado "cosmic object" is known by the name of a "Herbig-Haro stucture" and scientists say that it's approximately 0.3 light-years, or nearly 2 trillion miles long.

"Herbig-Haro objects" have been known to astronomers for a number of years however cosmologists say that they have never seen something this spectacular, and are surprized by the unique shape. Physicist Giovanni Fazio said, "I've never seen anything quite like this one".

The multi-coloured appearance of the object is due to the particles being at different frequences (meaning that the particles at the front of the object are more excited than the ones further behind). Thus, near the front of the "tornado" are short bluish streats while at the end there are long red plumes.

People cannot stop to marvel at space.

The physicists behind MIT have pin-pointed a blackhole that has dented itself into space-time. Although, this theoretically has already been proved the fact that scientists have actually observed such "phenomena" in the stars above brings home the peculiarity of blackholes.

Blackholes are formed when massive stars run out of fuel. The inward gravitational pressure out-measures the outward explosive force, resulting in the star imploding to a small point of infinite density. From here, the gravitional force is so strong that light cannot even escape.

In MIT cosmologists there were studying blackholes using "NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer", simply this analysed the patterns X-Ray light ommitted by the spinning of the blackhole. Because of the chaos in blackholes, these patterns are generated randomly. What they found was "identical patterns" across a 9 year period. Such "identital patterns" aren't the subject of coincidence. There must have been another factor involved.

The solution was provided by MIT:

"Similarities seen nine years apart imply something very fundamental is producing a pair of observed frequencies, namely the warping of space and time predicted by Einstein but rarely seen in such detail."

From this data scientists can derive to sought-after figures: the black hole's mass and how it spins. These factors could in time help us understand how blackholes, and time itself, works.

Does Earth seem such a peaceful place? And when you look out at the night sky doesn't everything seem beautiful? But really the "Milky Way" is more than it seems.

After, astronomers started mapping the Milky Way from the Sloane Telescope in New Mexico, they found something they didn't expect to see at all: a huge mass of faint stars. The astronomers have stated that: "This star group is within our galaxy's confines, about 30,000 light years away"

But what does that all mean? Well, scientists have come to the conclusion that the "Milky Way" (that's the galaxy our solar system occupies) is literally consuming a galaxy that is next to our own.

Princeston physicist Robert Lupton says:

the most likely interpretation of the new structure is of another, smaller galaxy being consumed by the Milky Way.

Following this discovery fellow cosmologists have proposed that the growth of galaxies might be of direct effect of similar "consumptions" - that this destructive behaviour is "actually" strangely normal.

What will happen next? Your guess.

What's going to come plumetting down towards Earth at nearly 30,000mph while containing real "stardust"? The answer is the NASA "Stardust" space probe.

The Stardust spacecraft was launched in 1999, with a low budget: $168.4 million (well for a space exploration program at least), and it's target was to analyse the Wild 2 comet, which had originated from beyond the reaches of Pluto.

After a five year voyage to catch up to the Wild 2 comet, Stardust opened 2 "tennis-racket-shaped particle collectors with about 100 small aerogel-filled compartments". These compartments were able to literally catch the so called "Stardust" that was expelled from the comet's tail.

Comets like Wild 2 come from the outer reaches of the solar system and have been circulating since (or before) the creation of our 9 "home" planets. So collecting physical data will let us gain an insight into the creation of the solar system, but more than that maybe into the creation of the universe as we see it today.

It's known that the capturing dust will be of a very small amount:

"thousands of particles of comet dust, virtually all of them considerably less than the width of a human hair."

However, such particles of dust will have to be studied and analysed carefully, which adament cosmologists expect to take around a decade.

Finally the "Stardust" comet probe, will arrive on the Jan. 15 in the Utah desert, after travelling at 29,000mph - this will be the fastest human made object in the history of mankind.

We can only wait for the results.

Edit: But in the end is the long wait, and the costly project really worth it?