Space calendar 2020: Every rocket launch, mission, eclipse, meteor shower and...
Ah, 2020. When we look back on you, there's going to be one word we use to describe your never-ending barrage of grim news: Unprecedented. Unprecedented bushfires. An unprecedented pandemic. Unprecedented levels of misinformation. Unprecedented lockdowns. Unprecedented warming in the Arctic. Unprecedented economic devastation. It can be hard to find positives in a year where…
The search for life on Mars, and the Space Tiger King...
Jerry van Andel sat alone on the bow of the RV Lulu, a floating junkyard of a ship, as it bobbed against the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Across deck, a team of scientists bustled around a basket full of strange life forms, wrenched from a mighty crack in the Earth, 10,000 feet below the…
EU could ramp up space exploration in response to SpaceX, China...
An artist's view of the Ariane 6 launch vehicle. ESA The European Union could be investing more heavily in rockets, satellites and space exploration, according to a report. European Commissioner Thierry Breton told Reuters on Sunday the EU wants to keep up with the US and China in the space realm, especially given SpaceX's recent…
How aliens could use black holes to power an intergalactic civilization
Remember when I warned everyone that humans would probably destroy all life in the universe like construction workers killing ant colonies to make way for a never-ending series of cosmic strip malls? A team of researchers from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland has me concerned that we…
NASA will pay you to design a space toilet that works...
Now is your chance to design the space toilet built just for astronauts. NASA If you could create a toilet worthy of space travel, what would it look like? NASA is preparing to return to the moon by 2024 and it needs help developing a new way for astronauts to go about their business on…
Super-puff worlds: These Jupiter-sized planets are light as cotton candy
Astronomers once believed that most solar systems would be much like our own, with small rocky planets near their sun, accompanied by gas giants orbiting the star at greater distances. Beginning in 1992, researchers began to find worlds orbiting alien stars, and soon found solar systems came in a wide variety of formations. Today, astronomers…
Space exploration is expensive, but it’s worth the price
I am one of the few African-American aerospace engineers who helped design the Apollo spaceships that took men to the Moon. My great-grandfather was a slave in Claiborne, Alabama, who used primitive tools to work the land. My father was born in Alabama before the Wright brothers made mankind’s first flight. He lived to see…
Space Station astronaut loses mirror during maintenance spacewalk
Astronaut Chris Cassidy in 2013. Shamil Zhumatov/Getty Images While performing routine maintenance on the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy accidentally added to the space junk already floating around our planet. As Cassidy swapped out a large battery pack weighing 428 pounds (194 kilograms) on the outside of the International Space Station, a small mirror…
The story of Ed Dwight: the man who nearly became the...
Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1933, Dwight’s father, Ed Dwight, Sr, played second base for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. His mother, Georgia Baker Dwight, encouraged the boy from a young age, and Ed Jr. became an avid reader, able to work well with his hands — including creating art, a…
One lucky space tourist could get a shot at an ISS...
NASA astronaut Drew Morgan on his first spacewalk in 2019. A space tourist may be doing the same thing in 2023. NASA Space tourism company Space Adventures announced a deal on Thursday with the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation to fly two space tourists to the International Space Station. What makes this contract an eye-opener…
