Editors' Picks
Area 51: Origins
America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.
Need for Speed
Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.
Beyond the Moon
It’s not a place, exactly. But it could be NASA’s next destination.
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 16 of 45
Last night NASA made one last attempt to contact the Spirit Mars rover, which got stuck in the sand two years ago and hadn’t been heard from since March 22. Nobody expected a response after 1200 previous unanswered messages, and sure enough, there was no answer from Mars. So, with the chances of success “practically [...]
May 25, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s special address to Congress – a request for supplemental appropriation for a variety of projects but most famously remembered for the announcement of his Man-Moon-Decade goal of Project Apollo. That event, cited by space advocates and excerpted in space and history documentaries, is remembered as [...]
May 24, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
In this time of endings for the space shuttle, there are still a few firsts left. On Saturday morning, Pope Benedict XVI made the first ever papal “visit” (via video link) to astronauts in orbit. In many ways it was an extraordinary conversation, ranging from the future of space exploration to condolences (to Paolo Nespoli [...]
May 23, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
With just one space shuttle flight left to go, every milestone on the current STS-134 mission is poignant for the astronauts and other folks who work on the program, and for those of us who’ve been watching them for a long time. Here’s a scene we’ll see only once more: A shuttle full of astronauts [...]
May 19, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
NASA's 12th Administrator talks about commercial space, flying fast, and the shuttle's legacy.
July 2011
| By Linda Shiner
A community of alternative rocketeers who may one day dominate the space biz.
May 2011
| By Stephen Joiner
Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin left earth. When he came back, everything changed.
May 2011
| By Allen Abel
One of the guiding geniuses behind the Apollo program is the winner of this year's National Air and Space Museum Trophy for lifetime achievement.
May 2011
| By Michael Klesius
NASA's space station manager looks back with satisfaction at one of history's greatest construction projects.
May 2011
| By Paul Hoversten
In a new autobiography, an Apollo 15 pilot tells what it was like to fly solo.
July 2011
| By Al Worden With Francis French
After four years of spiraling out from Earth, the Dawn spacecraft closes in on its first target.
July 2011
| By Tom Jones
The Russians made their first cosmonaut a hero. Did they really know him?
January 1999
| By Tom Harpole
A perennial hand-wringing topic among policy geeks is America’s decline in math and science proficiency. This sentiment has been expressed the entire 30 years I’ve worked on space science and exploration – new generations don’t care about space, can’t do math and science, can’t think properly and ...
May 14, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
Who can forget billionaire ex-spaceman Jeff Tracy and his five sons (Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, and John), each named after a Mercury astronaut? Remember how they—through their organization (International Rescue)—um...rescued people...internationally? Ok, so they were puppets. Deal with it, peop...
May 05, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan recently voiced his doubts and concerns over the future of the human spaceflight program, while former Lockheed-Martin CEO Norman Augustine reflected on the current state of our space “vision” and/or the possible lack thereof. I found these perspectives by two gia...
May 04, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan thinks the notion of a one-way trip to Mars is "a ridiculous concept...That's not the kind of people we are." And he's hardly alone in that view.Every time the subject of one-way Mars expeditions comes up, it reminds me, in a perverse way, of Ambrose Bierce's great Civi...
May 04, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
Late in 2014, a radically different type of rocket propulsion is set to show up on the International Space station for a period of experimentation.The technology is called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR). It's a rocket engine that uses electricity to ionize a gas such as...
May 02, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
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