Space will never be conquered! Sad, but true. Let me explain how I’ve reached this conclusion. Planet Earth is big! The furthest you can travel from home across the Earth’s surface is about 20 000 km (any further and you’re on the way home again). How long would it Read more…
St Patrick’s Academy in Dungannon is hosting a fantastic public event for stargazers this Saturday evening. This local school has its own observatory and astronomy club for the students but this event on 3 December is for anyone interested in astronomy (details below). The venue is St. Patrick’s Academy, Read more…
A few years ago there was a vogue among historians to write about ‘counterfactuals’.A counterfactual examines the importance of an event for subsequent history by asking what if that event had taken a radically different course.What if the Nazis had invaded the UK in 1940? What if Napoleon had won Read more…
Before Yuri Gagarin made the historic first orbit around the Earth in 1961, animals had already visited the unknown. They were used to collect medical data and to test the spacecraft’s durability before sending manned missions. Once the survivability of spaceflight was confirmed, humans then began to travel where previously Read more…
Back in December 2009, with great fanfare, space tourism company Virgin Galactic unveiled the vehicles their fare-paying passengers will ride in as they ascend into space. Built by the Spaceship Company (a coventure of Virgin and that supremely adventurous aircraft manufacturer Scaled Composites), the pair are engineering marvels. The huge Read more…
This month’s image is a NASA diagram of the classic 1960s Gemini spacecraft. Ten of these craft carried twenty astronauts into orbit between March 1965 and November 1966, filling the gap between the pioneering Mercury flights and the Moon-focused Apollo missions. These were essential to investigate just how to perform Read more…
On 14 September 2011, NASA revealed the design of its new rocket, the Space Launch System. This titanic vehicle may send American astronauts to the Moon, Near Earth Asteroids or even further into deep space. The SLS is intended to carry NASA’s proposed new crewed spacecraft, the Multi-Purpose Crew Read more…
The Lunar Module was an iconic spacecraft which carried two-man crews to and from the Moon’s surface during NASA’s Apollo Program of the 1960s and ‘70s. Along with the Saturn 5 rocket and the Apollo Command and Service Modules (CSM), the Lunar Module is the third of the trinity of Read more…
Apollo 15 was sent to the Moon in July 1971, its primary mission goals to explore the spectacular Hadley-Appenine region, carry out scientific experiments from orbit and evaluation of new and improved Apollo equipment,including the Lunar Rover. Here is the story of possibly the most ambitious Apollo moon landing. Read more…
Spirit, one of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers has finally transmitted its last data back to Earth. We look back upon the career of this valiant space explorer. Our neighbouring planet Mars came closer to Earth than it has for thousands of years, in August 2003. NASA had decided in 2000 Read more…