Can You Hear Me Major Tom? Comet Lander Not Responding
A little more than a year ago on November 12, 2014, the Philae lander had a rough landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Instead of neatly landing on the comet’s surface, it bounced a few times and […]
Duel of the Space Telescopes: Hubble vs. Webb
In 1990 I joined NASA at Kennedy Space Center as a bright-eyed engineer straight out of college, and the Hubble Space Telescope was inside the payload bay of the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery at launch pad […]
Planes with Frickin’ Laser Beams
Last month the Air Force announced that it will likely have a fighter-mounted directed energy pod in a time frame that is “a lot closer than . . . a lot of people think,” according to Air […]
Planet Nine: Our Solar System Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger
Since people first realized that Earth is a part of a larger group of planetary bodies, the solar system has been growing. Not actually growing, as in it’s somehow picking up more stuff, but growing in […]
The New Audi Quattro: Moon Certified
The new Audi Lunar Quattro has been introduced to the public. This week at the North American Auto Show in Detroit, a distinctly non-Audio-looking Audi was on display. It was the auto company’s entry in the […]
ESA’s Moon Base and How it Gets Us to Mars
The European Space Agency (ESA) recently formalized plans to send missions to the moon beginning in the early 2020s, with manned missions following by the middle of the decade. By 2030, they hope to have […]
Goodbye Planetary Rovers – Hello ‘Hopters’
On July 4th, 1997, the Sojourner rover touched down on Mars as a part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. It proceeded to send back an amazing array of imagery of the Martian landscape that captivated […]
North Korea has the H-Bomb! Um, No.
Nations all around the globe had a collective freak out this week when North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb in a test and declared that they have a hydrogen bomb. Oh crap! The most unstable leader […]
The Secret Space Station
The first space station was the Salyut 1, launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. The first U.S. station was Skylab, launched just over two years later. But those were almost upstaged by […]
The Key to Getting to Mars: Balloons
Okay, not balloons, exactly, but the next closest thing: inflatable habitation modules. With existing technology, the planned travel time to Mars is about six months. That’s a lot of time cooped up in a small […]
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