Space Programs
NASA, Soviet and Russian space programs and the International Space Station
Malice, Mischief and Misconceptions
The space community has fractured since the disastrous roll out of NASA’s “new direction.” Preceding the administration’s budget announcement, endless delays and rampant speculation about administrators, rockets, and program design and direction kept people guessing. The current trench warfare is...
June 26, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Flying While Female
China has selected its first two female astronauts, Space.com recently reported. But, unlike their male counterparts, females have to be married. “We believe married women would be more physically and psychologically mature,” Zhang Jianqui, the former deputy commander of China’s spaceflight program...
June 24, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Your Face in Space
With time running short for the space shuttle, NASA has come up with a way for the masses to journey with astronauts on the vehicle's two remaining voyages. Granted, it’s still impossible to actually hitch a ride to orbit, but you can upload and send a picture of yourself into space through NASA...
June 22, 2010 |
By Mary McKillop
Hayabusa Limps Home
If Hayabusa were a human explorer instead of a spacecraft, the first thing it might do on Sunday after returning to Earth from a seven-year voyage is pour a stiff drink.Japan's first mission to an asteroid has generally been a success, and a major step up for the nation's planetary program. But man...
June 11, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Good Times for Ken Bowersox
Most of the credit for Friday's near-perfect launch of the new Falcon 9 rocket rightly goes to Elon Musk, whose unusual blend of vision, competence, and almost compulsive candor (what other aerospace executive has the nerve to a) publish fixed launch prices, and b) openly criticize a U.S. Senator?)...
June 05, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
520 Days in a Can
Three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian walk into a simulation chamber...and don't come out for 17 months.That's pretty much the idea behind Mars 500, which starts tomorrow and aims to be the highest-fidelity simulation of a Mars mission ever conducted—as well as the first to last as ...
June 02, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
American Heroes
Memorial Day weekend is upon us, so thoughts of heroes and remembering them are foremost in my mind. As a kid growing up in the Sixties, I saw a lot of change in our country. There was upheaval and tension here at home and around the world but the U.S. space program was a shining light that inspir...
May 28, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
It’s the Space Economy, Stupid!
Those of us in favor of human lunar return have been called “dinosaurs” because, as it’s being told, we want to repeat what this nation already did 40 years ago. If that were our mission objective, such a characterization might be valid. But who really is the dinosaur?At a recent Senate hearing, ...
May 21, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Space Shuttle: The Time-Lapse Movie
A team of photographers captures Discovery's long journey to the launch pad.
May 17, 2010 |
By The Editors
Japan Sets Sail for Venus
While the U.S. space program is mired in political arguments over how to reach Earth orbit (something we've known how to do for 50 years), Japan's space agency JAXA, with far less money, is about to take a small but noteworthy step into the future.An HII-A launcher is scheduled to lift off from the...
May 14, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Exit Strategy
NASA’s new launch abort system just passed a major test. But what booster and capsule will use it?
May 06, 2010 |
By Michael Klesius
Browsing the Webb
The James Webb Space Telescope just cleared its most significant milestone, the Mission Critical Design Review. This means that the orbiting infrared observatory, scheduled to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket no earlier than June 2014 into orbit around the sun, about a million miles from Earth, is expe...
April 29, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Power of the Pen
Still picking yourself up off the floor after reading our recent post about the $152,000 that was paid at auction for Neil Armstrong's autograph, along with his famous "one small step" quote, written on a sheet of the Apollo 11 flight plan?Here's what Armstrong had to say in his 2005 biography by J...
April 26, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Manhigh Pioneer David Simons, 1922-2010
Six weeks before Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age, and four years before Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight, an adventurous young biomedical researcher named David Simons climbed to the edge of space inside a pressurized capsule, as part of a project called Manhigh. As we wrote in an article publishe...
April 23, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
X-37: Ready for Launch
On Thursday, April 22, the U.S. Air Force will finally launch its little, unmanned X-37 orbital spaceplane on top of an Atlas V rocket. The liftoff, which will take place in a window between 7:52 p.m. and 8:01 p.m., will mark the culmination of years of development for the newest U.S. spacecraft—an...
April 21, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
240,000-mile Filing Extension
"Dear Mr. Taxman: I'm sorry I missed the deadline. I was, uh, hmm, in a spaceship flying to the moon?"On the evening of April 15, 2010, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's John H. Glenn lecture series honored four legendary men of Apollo 13 on the 40th anniversary of their hair-raising ...
April 16, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
“We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there.”
During a carefully staged appearance at Kennedy Space Center yesterday, President Barack Obama rolled out his plans for the U. S. space program. Although there weren’t many surprises (the White House Office of Science and Technology, under the direction of John P. Holdren, had released a fact shee...
April 16, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Momentous Memorabilia
“Well I can’t say that this thing hasn’t been filled with excitement,” said astronaut Jim Lovell as Apollo 13's crew crowded into the Command Module Odyssey—following the explosion of an onboard tank in the Service Module—and headed back to Earth. CapCom immediately joked, "Well, James, if you can'...
April 15, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
To Do The Heavy Lifting
A recent talking points memo by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) seeks to clarify some aspects of the new direction in regards to the cancelled Project Constellation. Touted by some as “compromise,” it asserts that NASA will develop and build a new “Orion lite” crew vehicle whose...
April 14, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Apollo 13: Eyewitness to the Explosion
"Odyssey, You Have a Problem."If five men in Houston had realized what they were seeing through a telescope on the evening of April 13, 1970, they could have radioed those words to the crew of Apollo 13, who was still trying to grasp what had just happened: an oxygen tank on their spacecraft had ex...
April 12, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
