Editors' Picks
Printed in Space
If your star tracker breaks on the way to the moon, just hit Command P.
Area 51: Origins
America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.
Need for Speed
Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Vietnam Memoir
Stories from the war that shaped a generation.
Page 26 of 51
The Daily Planet Blog
A Bottle of Nothing
Call it a thought experiment, a way to engage the public, or an expensive waste of time.Either way, the "Message in a Bottle" task on yesterday's spacewalk outside the International Space Station was one of the more unusual chores ever by an astronaut. At the behest of the Japanese Space Agency JAX...
March 01, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
The First Countdown?
Most histories of space travel credit the first use of the rocket countdown to a work of fiction: Fritz Lang's 1929 science fiction film, "Frau im Mond" (Woman in the Moon).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaVLaD4vfBcMaybe not, though. British science fiction writer George Griffith used the same dram...
February 26, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Tankers Away
And the winner is: The Boeing Company.Michael Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, announced today that Boeing will supply the U.S. Air Force with 179 tankers derived from the company's 767 widebody to replace the aging KC-135 refueler fleet. The contract is estimated at $35 billion and is expected ...
February 24, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
Running Out of Time...
I should be in Stockholm right now, but instead I'm sitting at home typing this. We had several delays last night and ultimately timed out —i.e., we couldn't make the flight to Stockholm because we would have been on duty more than 16 hours by the time we landed, which is against the rules.The firs...
February 24, 2011
| By Steve Satre
The Once and Future Moon Blog
Vision statements for non-Visionaries
A seemingly trivial event has revealed some schadenfreude about NASA, along with a lot of irritation. Apparently (as is their wont) the fertile minds running our national space agency decided that the time has come (once again) for a new and improved vision statement – out with the old and in with...
February 23, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
The Daily Planet Blog
Photo Op for Soyuz
Busy days in Earth orbit.Space Shuttle Discovery is set to make its last voyage tomorrow, with liftoff planned for 4:50 p.m. Florida time. If all goes according to plan, Europe's Johannes Kepler unmanned cargo vehicle will have docked with the space station earlier in the day (at 10:45 U.S. Eastern...
February 23, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
After Walking On the Moon
You're the first man to set foot on the Moon. You're also a Korean War veteran, and a former test pilot who has flown more than 200 types of aircraft. What do you do for fun?Well, we don't know what he does for fun nowadays, but for two days in February 1979, Neil Armstrong set five world records f...
February 22, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
When Airmail Hazards Included Buffalo
India is an air-minded nation. Philatelist Pradip Jain notes in his 2002 book Indian Airmails that the Ramayama, the ancient Sanskrit epic, includes references to King Nala and Princess Damayanti sending "amorous messages to each other through the medium of a flying, talking swan." During the Maury...
February 18, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Who's First?
The things he carried: A sack of coffee. Fifty copies of the local newspaper, the Press Democrat. Three letters.Those letters are what put Fred Wiseman into the history books. On February 17, 1911, Wiseman—authorized by the Santa Rosa, California, postmaster—carried the first mail by airplane.To ce...
February 17, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Getting Up
Ever wonder what kind of takeoff a Viking Twin Otter can achieve with a stiff headwind and no sumo wrestlers on board?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG6eJP7SBQI&feature=related
February 15, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
"The Martian Lord of Creation"
"Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance.... Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread." —H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds, 1898.Wells wasn't alone in thinking Red Planet Dwellers would be a comp...
February 10, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Carrier-bound, and Unmanned
The X-47B, an unmanned combat vehicle being developed by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Navy, made a successful first flight at California's Edwards Air Force Base on February 4.The X-47B is no small toy—it's about the size of the retired Grumman F-14 Tomcat. It will continue to work toward the ...
February 07, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
The Once and Future Moon Blog
Journey to the Center of the Moon
A recently published science paper presented results of a re-analysis of seismic (moonquake) data sent to the Earth from a network emplaced by the Apollo astronauts 40 years ago. The scientists processing the old data found that the Moon may have more than a simple core – it may have a layered, pa...
February 04, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
The Daily Planet Blog
Working the Ramp
They work in all weather loading and unloading your suitcases, the mail, freight, even dead bodies and wild and domestic animals. They deice the airplane in winter, and clean it between each flight. So spare a thought for the airline industry's baggage handlers.Liesl Miller Orenic, an associate pro...
February 03, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Kepler's Catch
When a veteran planet hunter like Debra Fischer calls it the most momentous discovery since 51 Peg, you know it must be big.In 1995, scientists found the first planet circling a normal star outside our solar system—an unassuming yellow dwarf called 51 Pegasi. In the 16 years since, they've identifi...
February 02, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Coaxial Cruising
Pretty cool video here of Sikorsky's latest whirlybird, the X2 demonstrator, which has hit 262 knots, or 300 miles an hour, a record for a helo. Nice acceleration too. The coaxial rotors spin in opposite directions to keep the aircraft from stalling at high speeds. It's no easy feat, as this articl...
February 01, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
Junk Mail From Above
Once you get used to the slightly overcaffeinated host, this is a pretty cool project —to drop a bunch of paper airplanes from a high-altitude balloon and see where they land. The team launched their balloon earlier this month, as the video shows. But, from what I can tell on their website and Twit...
January 31, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Cosmic Milestone: The End of the Line
Hubble has done it again, squinting deeper into the universe, and hence farther back in time, than ever before. What it sees is a little smudge of light that turned out to be the most distant galaxy ever detected, 13.2 billion light-years away. It's not seeable in visible light, only in infrared. T...
January 27, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
A Guppy with Talons
No, it's not some freakish genetics experiment. It's NASA's Super Guppy transport hauling around a couple of T-38s. Read about it here.
January 26, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Fired Up
Balkan military officials report that China's new stealth fighter might have some technology acquired from a Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.Whoever recently took this footage of the new fighter doing high-speed taxi tests gets plenty fired up about it around ...
January 25, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
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A Mosquito in FlightRestored from the hull up, a de Havilland Mosquito flies over New Zealand's Hauraki Gulf. |
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Air & Space Interview
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Bobby BraunNASA's outgoing Chief Technologist talks about what's in the R&D pipeline |
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