Once upon a time rockets were exciting symbols of a glorious and exciting future when everyone would get their chance to have a holiday on the Moon. Well the future is now and the lunar resorts are still not here. Launch vehicles are another dull but necessary piece of civilisation’s Read more…
On 20 February 1962, John Glenn (1921-2016) became the fifth human to enter space. For his spaceflight Glenn, a US Marine Corps aviator was strapped into a tiny Mercury capsule (named Friendship 7) just as Alan Shepard and “Gus” Grissom, the two earlier US astronauts had been. There was a Read more…
Fewer than 600 people have ever seen our world from space and only a couple of dozen have travelled far enough away to seen the Earth as a planet against the infinity of space. All have found viewing their homeworld from beyond to be a profound experience. Russian cosmonaut Read more…
Venus has always been regarded as Earth’s Sister Planet. After all, it can be the closest planet to us and it is nearly the same size as Earth. But how similar is it really to Earth? Astronomers get asked this question very often: “I saw this really bright light Read more…
What exciting space events has 2012 in store for us? What important space anniversaries are coming up this year? Welcome to our annual guide to what the Universe has waiting ahead! This year marks twenty years since the first extra-solar planets were discovered when a pair of planets were 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…
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…
In more than twenty years of hard work, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has made both beautiful images and profound discoveries, sometimes doing both at the same time. What are its greatest contributions to science? Hubble has enabled us to estimate just how big and how old the universe is 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…
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned thousands of fascinating images of our neighbouring world, here is a selection some of the most striking and thought-provoking (false colour) images. Part of the Martian surface that has cracked into a natural maze, Noctis Labyrinthus (the Labyrinth of Night), lies at the west Read more…
Apollo 18, a movie hybrid of horror and science fiction is stirring up a lot of interest. Your intrepid reporter decided to see what the fuss was about. Here is a brief review and my thoughts on the movie’s accuracy. Well, I splashed out the price of a movie 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…
This portrait of the Earth and Moon together in space was taken on 26 August by NASA’s Juno spacecraft which is currently en route for Jupiter. The image was made when Juno was about 10 million km away as part of the checking procedure for the probe’s instruments. If you Read more…
“Is there life on Mars?” More than fifty years into the Space Age and there still is no definitive answer. Completing our series of posts on this mystery, we look at the latest ideas about the existence of beings on our neighbouring planet. In the previous part of this Read more…
Could water be streaming down Martian mountainsides? This startling vision may be a reality according to recent results from NASA’s MRO spacecraft. Here is the latest on the waters of Mars. Although we are exploring the surface of Mars through marvellous rovers like Spirit and Opportunity and their forthcoming big Read more…
The approaching Comet Elenin has triggered suspicious and fearful speculation among some observers. A contribution to this brouhaha has been the lack of images of this visitor from deep space, but at last there are images from a NASA space observatory of this oncoming comet. On 1 August 2011 Comet 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…
NASA’s final Shuttle flight is due this week, in this article Colin Johnston reveals what this historic space project has meant to him. (This article is a sequel to Apollo and me which appeared in the July 2009 issue of Astronotes. It’s another indulgent wallow in shameless nostalgia so 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…
The peak at the centre of Tycho Crater on our Moon has been imaged by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Let’s take a look at this spectacular mountain of the Moon. One of the best-known lunar craters, Tycho is not especially large at some 85 km across. However it is Read more…
Space technology is transforming archeology. Use of satellite imagery is revealing details of the past previously inaccessible to scholars of ancient times. Studying the ancient civilizations of the past is not always an easy feat. Limited resources, early languages and lost cities make exploring the past a challenge. Delving under Read more…
The Shuttle era is coming to an end this year thirty years after the launch of Columbia. While it can boast many successes and certainly caught the imagination of the public this project also had some disasters and many critics. Columbia was the first shuttle to be launched on April Read more…
NASA’s Dawn spaceprobe is approaching the asteroid Vesta. At a distance of 483 000 km, the spacecraft has made images rivalling the best Hubble Space Telescope views of this fascinating little world. Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt. Relics of the Solar Nebula which birthed the planets, these Read more…
NASA’s Space Shuttles have become a familar sight in their thirty years of service, but there have been other shuttle designs which never left the ground.Some were ingenious alternative concepts to the vehicle which is shortly to be retired, some were potential replacements and there was even a couple of Read more…
The first American in space, Alan Shepard, made his historic flight fifty years ago. Part of Project Mercury, the flight of Freedom 7 followed mere weeks after Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight. The Space Race was underway! “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?” NASA astronaut Alan Read more…
NGC 6302 is a beautiful example of a planetary nebula formed when a bloated red giant star transformed into a tiny white dwarf, belching about half its mass into space in the process. This dramatic image looks like some vast cosmic eruption, and that impression is entirely correct. We’re looking Read more…
This year will see both the end of space flights by NASA’s Shuttle fleet and the thirtieth anniversary of the first orbital mission by this historic spacecraft. Our coverage of these milestones begins with an overview of the project’s chequered history. In the glory days of the Space Race, Read more…
One day vast solar sails pushed along by rays of sunlight may carry payloads between the planets. Tracy McConnell explains how this romantic vision is slowly becoming a fact. The concept of sailing gracefully through the stars is a provocative one that has been around for longer than you may Read more…
Gleaned from NASA and Hubblesite.org, here are some facts you may not know about the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). 1. The HST’s history is longer than you might have thought, going back to just after World War II. In 1946, the astronomer Lyman Spitzer (1914-97) identified the main advantages Read more…
Apollo 18 is a SF/Horror movie presented as newly-found film footage taken by the fictional crew of a lost 1970s lunar landing mission. The Apollo 18 film uses real NASA movie footage from the Moon (some of it doctored with CGI) and new studio-shot footage with actors and special effects Read more…
Comet Tempel 1 is by far the most closely studied comet in history. We saw it up close for the first time in July 2005, when NASA’s Deep Impact mission flew past it, pelting in with a projectile on the way. On 14 February 2011, another NASA mission, Stardust-Next visited Read more…
Kepler-11 is an amazing, newly-discovered system of exoplanets. About 2000 light years from Earth, six planets orbit a star like our Sun. Each planet is bigger and more massive than the Earth. This whole planetary system is squeezed into a region slightly larger than Mercury’s orbit. This bizarrely shrunken Read more…
Forty years ago, NASA’s Apollo 14 mission landed the fifth and sixth men on the Moon. Apollo 14 was a triumph for one man in particular. Alan Shepard fought debilitating illness for the chance to walk on another world. On 31 January 1971, Alan B. Shepard Jr. was NASA’s Read more…
An older generation will never forget where they were when they heard the news of President Kennedy’s murder Alas, I have three such memories. The 2001 terror attacks in the US, the destruction of Columbia and its crew in 2003 and the loss of Challenger are events whose horror has Read more…
Today is the anniversary of the deaths of the crew of the shuttle Challenger in 1986. The tragedy was of course recognised world-wide and letters of sympathy flooded in to NASA and the White House. Historian Dwayne Day located a letter from a well-wisher among the papers of the late Read more…
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is to use a unique system called a “sky crane” to touch down next year on the Red Planet. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have just released a video of this previously untried mechanism under test. (UPDATE: it all worked perfectly, for more detail see Read more…
2011 will be a year of exciting and historic upcoming events in space exploration. It is is also a significant anniversary year of some triumphs and tragedies in space history. Here’s a look at what lies in store. This year marks four centuries since sunspots were first observed telescopically by Read more…
NASA’s amazing Kepler planet-searching spacecraft has made a significant new discovery. Planet Kepler-10b is an inhospitable world but it is one of the smallest confirmed exoplanets yet found and may be the most Earth-like world discovered so far. The Kepler satellite looks for planets passing between their parent star Read more…
Christmas 1968 saw three men from Earth make a remarkable and unprecedented voyage of exploration. A dramatic and hurriedly planned mission gave the crew the first human view of the Moon’s farside and the whole human race saw our homeplanet in a new way. This is the story of Apollo Read more…
This year we could have witnessed a Christmas-time shuttle flight as November’s STS-133 mission had been re-scheduled to 17 December, but once again Discovery’s final flight has been postponed, this time to February. Sinead McNicholl has the details. Originally Discovery had been set to launch on 1 November, but this Read more…
NASA’s Deep Impact probe flew past comet Hartley 2 and revealed a odd-looking peanut-shaped nucleus. What are the first impressions from these exciting images? Only about a mile (1.6 km) from end to end, the nucleus of Comet Hartley2 is hardly the most impressive member of the Solar System. Never Read more…
It is 14 November 2019 and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when humans first walked on another world, has been and gone but today a new and exciting voyage begins. A massive booster stage pushes a spacecraft out of Earth orbit. This vehicle comprises two Orion Read more…
NASA’s next manned spacecraft will be the Orion, a capsule which will be carried into space by a rocket. Weighing 25 tonnes, each Orion will carry up to six people. Accommodation on board is cosy at best, cramped at worst. Orion was intended to take astronauts to the Moon and Read more…
I’d like to tell you that I’m on the surface of an asteroid called Itokawa. I travelled there on a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission called Hayabusa and was left behind. Yes, I’m there, millions of miles away, among the rocks on Itokawa, right now as I’m typing this.You must Read more…
In the early 1960s, the sky had no limits for NASA . Planners for the agency foresaw an ever-expanding future of exploration through the Solar System. Some amazing missions were planned. Alas in August 1967, the US Congress refused to support NASA’s plans for the 1970s. Ever since then NASA’s Read more…