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A Giant Leap Forward

October 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
This picture taken on June 9, 2012 shows

ON A MONDAY AFTERNOON IN JUNE, belated history was made 213 miles above the Earth’s surface. At 2:07 p.m. Beijing time, the Chinese Shenzhou-9 space capsule, carrying three astronauts, plugged into a 31-inch-wide receptacle on China’s unoccupied Tiangong-1 space station. At the moment the two vehicles connected, by way of a yellow-painted latch, China became only the third nation, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union, to dock two spacecraft in orbit. The first orbital linkups of American and Soviet spacecraft occurred in 1966 and 1967. To some observers, China’s third-place finish ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, Culture, November-December 2012
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Moon Above Politics

September 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jAlE_HLDj8 This morning's announcement that NASA wants to build a manned moon base by 2017 suggests Democrats and Republicans can agree about something big and expensive. Earlier this year, the idea of an American moon base by 2020 emerged not from the Obama administration, but from then-Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich. Dismissed as crackpot grandstanding -- Gingrich got a lot of that -- the NewtBase became a semi-serious talking point during the primary campaign. It took off particularly when the Republican nominees reached Florida, ... Read More

More like this: The 101, Uncategorized
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Rules for Dining with Astronauts

August 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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From NASA's Letters to Earth, a guide to "How to Be Civilized on the Space Frontier." Below, advice on entertaining while in orbit from astronaut Don Pettit: Now is the time to break out those thermal-stabilized pouches of beef steak that you have been hoarding. Bring out any specialty item from your personal crew allotment (these items arrive on the periodic unmanned resupply spacecraft that visit us). Perhaps you can share a can of smoked anchovies, New Mexico green chili, or a piece of Old Amsterdam cheese. Always serve something special that is not repeatedly eaten on the ... Read More

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Researchers & Discoveries: Black Hole Hunter

May 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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What’s her story? In January, Andrea Ghez became the first woman to win the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize, one of the highest honors in astronomy. How’d she do that? Proved that a supermassive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy. Ghez helped develop optical technologies that cut through the sight-muddying effects of Earth’s atmosphere, enabling her team to see the Milky Way’s center — 26,000 light years away — far more clearly than ever before. Which let them monitor thousands of previously invisible stars. Their orbital trajectories, Ghez showed, ... Read More

More like this: Education, May-June 2012
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Nuclear Renaissance in Space

April 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In this, the 50th year of using nuclear energy for space missions, the U.S. is preparing to restart domestic production of a plutonium isotope that fuels space vehicles — a topic that was front and center at the recent Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space conference, held in The Woodlands, Texas. Despite the utility and the necessity of using radioisotopes to power missions ranging from the Mars Rovers to the Voyager 2 probe now exploring the furthest edge of our solar system, the assembled experts said the public has a poor grasp of the safeguards in place for nuclear power in ... Read More

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Las Cumbres Helps Confirm Planet With Two Suns

September 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Las Cumbres Helps Confirm Planet With Two Suns

Three years ago, Lisa Conti told us about the retired Google honcho who set about ringing the globe with a network of telescopes available to both school kids and astrophysicists. That effort paid a dividend, made public this week, as the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network contributed to discovering a planet that orbits two suns, the first such planet definitively identified by human astronomers. This “circumbinary planet,” to use its fancy name, was detected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope near the constellation Cygnus. (Even NASA couldn’t resist drawing attention to ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Science
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What Columbus Can Teach Space Program

October 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

What is the future of the U.S. space program? NASA has just a few launches remaining for the three decade-old space shuttle and the replacement Ares space vehicle may be canceled before it ever lifts off. For the first time since the dawn of the space age, the American manned space program may be coming to a close. Stephen Pyne, a historian and professor at Arizona State University, discusses what previous ages of exploration reveal about what the United States should do in space. Surprisingly, understanding the visions that drove Columbus, Magellan, and other explorers to risk all ... Read More

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Launching Pad: Obama Gives Space Plans Some Gravity

April 15, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

Barack Obama the salesman has spent much of his presidency spinning historic opportunity out of challenge, hard-selling his visions for health care, nuclear disarmament and a green economy. Thursday, he faced one of his toughest conceptual pitches: recasting what looks to many like the end of American manned space flight — at least for the indefinite future — as a beginning to something bigger. Famous astronauts, space bloggers and senators with high-tech constituents to look out for have all balked at Obama's plan, announced in February, to scrap the Constellation program to return ... Read More

More like this: Science, Science & Environment, The Idea Lobby
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Beating Back Space Invaders

April 11, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

Hand-wringing over civilization-ending asteroid impacts has taken a back seat to health care, the economy and this winter’s weather. Still, catastrophic impacts do happen. Ask the dinosaurs. They were wiped off the map for good by an estimated 6-mile-wide impactor that struck the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago. (Although some scientists now finger climate change in their extinction.) Anyone who’s ever walked around Arizona’s mile-wide Barringer crater, made about 50,000 years ago, can attest to the destructive force of our solar system’s space junk. Only a ... Read More

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Gas on Mars Silent But Not Deadly

March 10, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

Scientists have ruled out the possibility that the presence of methane gas on Mars is due to meteorites or volcanic activity. Recent research in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters highlights the hope that the consistent levels of methane on the Red Planet could be the result of microorganisms in the Martian soil that are producing the gas as a "by-product of their metabolic processes." "As Sherlock Holmes said, 'Eliminate all other factors and the one that remains must be the truth,'" said professor Mark Sephton of the department of earth science and engineering at Imperial ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2010, Science, Science & Environment, The Cocktail Napkin
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