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 34 of 45
We sure do love our celebrities, don't we? And I don't mean whatsisname, who won on American Idol last night. I'm talking about the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope, whose astronaut repairmen received a call from President Obama yesterday, and will deliver live testimony from space at a Congre...
May 21, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
A collection of readings, pictures, and videos to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.
We’re about to get a peek at the solar system’s
final frontier.
July 2009
| By Guy Gugliotta
What it was like, in the astronauts’ own words. Excerpts from a new book by Andrew Chaikin.
May 20, 2009
| By Andrew Chaikin with Victoria Kohl
I'm already kicking myself. A Minotaur rocket is launching from Wallops Island, Virginia tonight, with the Air Force Tacsat-3 spacecraft onboard, and I won't be there. I drove four and a half hours for the first launch attempt on May 5, but got rained out, and alas, can't make it back down for this...
May 19, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
In 1982, the year E.T. The Extraterrestrial ruled at the box office, another, less heralded movie about aliens came out—John Carpenter's remake of The Thing, starring Kurt Russell. In the first film, a kind-hearted, magical being appears on Earth, works miracles, then ascends into the heavens with ...
May 18, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
A newly formed commission led by Norman Augustine will review NASA’s human spaceflight program with the aim of determining if we are on the “right track.” This is familiar territory for Augustine, who led the 1990 Advisory Committee on the Future of the US Space Program. Now, 19 years later, it m...
May 15, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
It's a big week for space telescopes. Hubble's getting an upgrade, Europe's Herschel (the largest mirror ever sent into space) and Planck observatories are on the pad awaiting a Thursday launch, and the six-year-old Spitzer space telescope is about to start its second life. Any day now (May 12 was...
May 13, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Judith Young wore a light, sheer robe, almost a wrap, that reached to within inches of the floor, over silky, swishy pajama-looking clothes. Very comfortable looking, the kind of new age-y clothes an academic wears so she can devote all her energy to thinking. Her long gray hair reached down her ba...
May 12, 2009
| By Mike Klesius
What you'll need to assemble your own space station.
March 01, 2007
| By Joe Pappalardo
Norman Augustine, that perennial blue-ribbon panelist, just accepted the easiest gig of his career—or the hardest. He's been asked by the White House to review NASA's plans for human space exploration, to help chart a "vigorous and sustainable" path forward. If Augustine wanted, he could just dust ...
May 08, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Recently, the acting Administrator of NASA testified before Congress on his agency’s implementation of our National Space Policy, previously known as the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). In the question and answer period, he made a rather startling statement to the effect NASA was still trying ...
May 05, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
While we wait for the Obama administration to name the next NASA chief (sound of millions of fingertips drumming impatiently on desktops), we might do well to recall that we've been here before. Piers Bizony points out in The Man Who Ran the Moon that the Kennedy administration ran through 17 candi...
May 04, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
This is clever and cool, although I admit, several minutes of random, dissonant piano notes can wear a bit thin. An applet called "Moonbell" lets you play music derived from topographic profiles of the moon. Altitude data returned by Japan's Kaguya spacecraft are converted to musical intervals. Y...
May 01, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Small satellites used to be all the rage. Now, to be really cutting edge, they have to be fast, too, as in fast to build, test, and launch."Operationally responsive" is military-speak for fast: Field commanders want spacecraft that can return images and other data quickly from some hot spot they'd ...
April 28, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Lunar dust sticks to everything! It’s electrically charged! It causes silicosis – astronauts on the Moon will get “black lung” disease, just like coal miners on Earth! It’s so abrasive that under its obnoxious influence, moving parts slowly grind to a halt! We can’t possibly cope with it! So m...
April 24, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
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