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 30 of 45
If you know children who are sick with worry about the supposed end of the world in 2012, here's the antidote: a six-page brief by NASA Ames Research Center astrobiologist David Morrison explaining why the whole Mayan calendar scare is a load of nonsense.The doomsday scenario, in case you hadn't he...
October 15, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Just when you thought Saturn's ring situation couldn't get any cooler than the recent equinox photos by Cassini, make way for the mega-ring. Astronomers Anne Verbiscer, Michael Skrutskie, and Douglas Hamilton just announced that they've discovered a fantastically huge ring around Saturn. Their tool...
October 09, 2009
| By Mike Klesius
Friendly warning: Do not be in the moon's Cabeus Crater tomorrow morning. At 7:31 eastern time, a giant, two-and-a-half ton empty rocket stage will come crashing down from the sky at 1.5 miles a second. Four minutes later, another, smaller spacecraft will hit near the same spot. What the...? Ahh, i...
October 08, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
24,000 feet over the Atlantic, east of Long Island, aboard G-Force One, Boeing 727-200 (likely the only 727 spiffed up with winglets). 30 souls on board.“First parabola. Mars gravity, one-third of Earth’s gravity. Try some push-ups.”Oh, piffle. This is nothing “Second parabola. Lunar gravity, one-...
October 06, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
Water is an extremely useful substance in space. The recent finding of water on the Moon has generated considerable comment in the space community; a quick search on Google using the phrase “lunar water” returns over 7.66 million hits. Lunar water’s significance lies not in its role as a medium f...
October 04, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
Okay, that was one of the strangest sendoffs in launch history. Not only did space tourist and Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté keep putting on his red clown nose, the whole crew periodically broke into the cheesy pop song "Mammy Blue" as they were getting ready to board their Soyuz rocket f...
September 30, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
The debate over what kind of rocket to use for NASA's exploration program has become so clouded by politics and salesmanship that it's hard for outsiders to tell any more which approach would be best, or even if it's still possible to send people beyond Earth orbit. The Augustine commission says it...
September 29, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
The extreme dryness of the Moon is established scientific dogma. The study of Apollo rock and soil samples pretty much had convinced scientists that the Moon has no water. Because its surface is in a vacuum and experiences extreme temperature swings at the equator (from -150° to 100° C), the Moon ...
September 25, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
It's the biggest open secret in the space community: the Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt will not be leaving for the Red Planet this year, as scheduled, and will have to wait for 2011 when the orbits of Earth and Mars synch up again.The Russian space agency Roscosmos, which is responsible for the e...
September 24, 2009
| By Mike Klesius
For that satellite dish on your roof and the phone calls you make to Japan, you can thank Harold Rosen.
September 2009
| By Guy Gugliotta
If I were running the space program—which is unlikely, I admit—Saturn's moon Titan would be very high on the list of destinations for the next major planetary mission. Sure, Mars is appealing, largely because of its similarity to Earth.But take a look at this radar image of Titan's northern polar r...
September 16, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
In the 1950s Harvey Allen solved the problem of atmospheric entry. But first he had to convince his colleagues.
November 2009
| By Andrew Chaikin
Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble, others to learn about Mars.
September 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
An F-16 crash has claimed the life of Lieutenant Assaf Ramon, the son of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart in 2003. One year after losing his father, Assad revealed his own astronaut aspirations. "I want to share my father's experiences, and to under...
September 14, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
There's been a lot of fretting in space policy circles about the launch "gap" after the U.S. space shuttle retires, and how NASA will manage to ferry astronauts to the space station when it has no space vehicle of its own. Equally important is how cargo will be delivered. Now that six people are l...
September 11, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Over the long holiday weekend, Turner Classic Movies regaled us with a really obscure one – the 1960 biopic, I Aim at the Stars, starring Curd Jürgens. This movie is a biography of Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for America. Although n...
September 09, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
Over the next year or so, NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) will be systematically photographing the Apollo landing sites from orbit. Here's the most recent view, showing the Apollo 12 landing site where Pete Conrad and Alan Bean came down in Nobember 1969, near the same spot where the...
September 04, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
...But not necessarily in that order, when you're dealing with the world's largest solid rocket motor. In fact, engineers who tried last Thursday to light the ATK five-segment motor planned for NASA's Ares I rocket, were in an underground bunker half a mile away when ignition was to occur at a quar...
August 31, 2009
| By Mike Klesius
In 1961, Alan B. Shepard’s successful 15-minute sub-orbital hop gave President Kennedy the high cover needed to announce a reach for the Moon, “by the end of this decade.” America’s spirit was lifted and Alan Shepard became a national hero, getting ticker tape parades and White House receptions. T...
August 21, 2009
| By Paul D. Spudis
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