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 18 of 45
Amazing what you can see in a 10-inch telescope if the conditions are right. Dutch amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh got a picture of STS-133 astronaut Steve Bowen spacewalking outside the International Space Station last week.
March 07, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
Ron Grabe, launch system manager for Orbital Sciences, didn't try to sugar-coat the news. "Tonight we're all pretty devastated," he said during a predawn press briefing at Vandenberg AFB today.Orbital's Taurus XL rocket had just dumped NASA's $424 million Glory climate satellite into the Pacific oc...
March 04, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
On February 15, 2011 a symposium entitled “U.S. Human Spaceflight: Continuity and Stability” was held at Rice University’s James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy. Organized by George Abbey, the resident space expert at the Baker Institute, one might have suspected that it would be Shuttle-centr...
March 01, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
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
Shuttle crews from the 1980s recall how their new vehicle took some getting used to.
February 28, 2011
| By The Editors
A fleet of winged spacecraft, the likes of which we'll never see again.
March 01, 2011
| By Michael Klesius
Highlights from 30 years of astronaut videos, filmed on location in Earth orbit.
February 28, 2011
| By The Editors
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
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
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
"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
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
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
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
How to discover 467 asteroids in your spare time.
January 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Change comes to the place where spaceflight was born.
March 2011
| By Michael Cassutt
In orbit, it’s all about connections.
March 2011
| By Michael Klesius
It's a very cool animation, and the idea is certainly sensible: use existing shuttle external tank, four-segment boosters, and space shuttle main engines, without the expense of a reusable orbiter. But with Orion riding beside and below the external tank, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of go...
January 21, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
It was "the end of innocence," according to veteran space shuttle commander Hoot Gibson—the last flight before the Challenger tragedy, which shocked the nation less than two weeks later and changed the course of the shuttle program.On that evening, though, 25 years ago exactly, the mood was all upb...
January 18, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
A real comedy of errors and misunderstandings collided this week between the new NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and the agency’s Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT) Congressionally mandated 90-day report (their initial findings on how to implement agency direction). Though flush with the usua...
January 14, 2011
| By Paul D. Spudis
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