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 20 of 45
How engineers altered a jumbo jet to carry the world's biggest airborne telescope.
January 2011
| By Trudy E. Bell
It's no secret that the astronaut corps today, with an average age between 47 and 48, is a bit older than the in-their-primers of Mercury and Gemini. And eyesight, it turns out, is one measure of age. Approximately 80 percent of the current astronaut corps wears eye correction (i.e. glasses or cont...
November 12, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
Space traveler and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will discuss her book and answer questions online from November 15 to 19.
November 10, 2010
| By The Editors
What impresses me most about the new photos of the moon taken by the Chinese Chang’e-2 orbiter is not their beauty (although they are pretty) nor their sharpness (NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter returns higher resolution images). It's the fact that they were unveiled by Premier Wen Jiabao (left...
November 10, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
Remember when space exploration was “groovy” and excitement about seeing humans explore the Solar System within our lifetimes was palpable? What happened to NASA and America’s dream to boldly go? The pathway that assured us that space exploration is cool, amazing and pushes excellence has disap...
November 06, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
Although the discovery of ice on the Moon comes from a wide variety of different measurements, they are all “remote sensing.” We have not yet landed near these deposits and examined them up close. Thus, we do not know the physical nature of lunar polar ice. Having spent the last couple of weeks ...
November 06, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
The first close-up photos of Comet Hartley 2 came in this morning from NASA's Epoxi spacecraft. Dramatic!
November 04, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
As the space shuttle program winds down, an obvious question faces NASA: How many astronauts will it need in an era of drastically reduced flights? Only three Americans live on the space station at any one time, typically, and those slots come open just twice a year. As for a moon base or Mars miss...
November 01, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
Now this is a charming idea, and maybe a handy one too – fleets of solar sails delivering pictures of distant worlds back to the home planet.Data is a valuable commodity in the Information Age, just as spices and silk were in centuries past. So Joel Poncy and his team at Thales Alenia Space have im...
October 28, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The idea that ancient cultures were keen observers of the night sky is neither surprising nor new: think of the Druids, the Mayans, and the Babylonians. But most examples from the annals of archaeoastronomy seem to come from the northern hemisphere.Now a team of researchers from Macquarie Universit...
October 26, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
A year ago, the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission team announced the detection of water in the impact plume produced after the Centaur separated from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and crashed into the Moon. We now have more detailed information on the water a...
October 22, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
Floating off to sleep, Earthgazing, making sure the capsule doesn't depressurize: all standard on a space vacation.
October 22, 2010
| By Gregory Olsen
There's some justice in the fact that the worst rocket accident in history, which happened 50 years ago today, is remembered by the name of the man who caused it.Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin was an ambitious military leader who rose to command the Soviet Union's Strategic Missile Forces during the Cold...
October 22, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
Two years ago, we ran a web article about a small band of software developers, model rocket builders, and anonymous NASA space shuttle engineers who were pitting a pair of alternative launch vehicle ideas against NASA's Ares rockets developed for the now-canceled Constellation program. These altern...
October 18, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship, the VSS Enterprise, made its first piloted free flight and landing yesterday in Mojave, California. Pete Siebold was at the controls.
October 11, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
With the chill of fall in the air it's that time of year when we're reminded of turning leaves, football, and the fact that the known universe looks like a Thanksgiving cornucopia.Cosmologists have come up with this graphic to convey how the universe formed, expanded, cooled, and, more recently (on...
October 08, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
NASA’s new authorization bill (S.3729) was passed by Congress before they cleared out of town and will soon be signed by the President, codifying into law the federal government’s formal abandonment of the Vision for Space Exploration. In its place is a mish-mosh of platitudes, entitlement program...
October 07, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka are due to launch to the space station at 7:10 P.M., U.S. Eastern time today, from the Baikonur launch center in Kazakhstan. Fellow astronaut Ron Garan is at Baikonur with Kelly, providing live commentary via his...
October 07, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
In the wake of several misleading news headlines, researchers at Cranfield University in the U.K. have had to set the record straight: No, they're not looking for aliens in Earth's atmosphere.But they are looking for microbes floating around in the stratosphere, at altitudes up to 22 miles. The...
October 06, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
Scale models of the planets are popping up in cities and parks all over the country.
October 05, 2010
| By Mark Betancourt
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