The thirtieth anniversary of Strategic Defense Initiative

It was thirty years ago this week that President Ronald Reagan gave a historic speech proposing, for the first time, a space-based anti-ballistic missile system for the United States.  The plan, once developed, would utilize ground and space-based weaponry to blast apart incoming nuclear missiles.  The basic premise was an array of missile-launching satellites...

Read More

In memory of the crew of STS-107

The crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, who perished in re-entry from Mission STS-107 ten years ago today February 1, 20...

Read More

"The Eagle has landed."

Neil Armstrong1930 - 201...

Read More

Fiftieth anniversary of John Glenn's orbital spaceflight

Fifty years ago today, on February 20th 1962, John Glenn flew inside a Mercury space capsule christened Friendship 7 atop an Atlas LV-3B rocket, taking off from Cape Canaveral and into the history books...It was the first orbital flight around the Earth by an American. Glenn made three orbits over the course of nearly five hours, before safely splashing down in the Atlantic.Just...

Read More

Newt Gingrich promises permanent Moon base by 2020

That's if he's elected President, 'course (and if he wins re-election in 2016).Read about Gingrich's plans for a lunar establishment here.I just couldn't resist having some fun with this... "To the MOON, Alice...

Read More

End of the Space Shuttle program

The orbiter Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this morning, at 5:57 a.m.And so, after 135 missions that began on April 12th 1981, the Space Shuttle program - a system that began to be engineered in the late Sixties - has come to an end. So too apparently has the United States' manned space endeavors: NASA has no crew-capable vehicles anywhere close to near-future...

Read More

Twenty-five years ago today...

High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless...

Read More

Witness the fiery re-entry of the HAYABUSA probe over Australia

Remember when the Mir space station came crashing and burning out of the sky nine years ago? I was watching that on TV and among friends we jokingly quoted Kirk's line from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: "My God Bones. What have I done?"Well, this ain't the flaming destruction of a space vessel for once. This is the atmospheric re-entry of the HAYABUSA Asteroid Explorer mission, videoed from a NASA DC-8 over Australia. The Japanese Aerospace...

Read More

Interstellar hydrogen would be lethal for warp drive travellers

Assuming that we could ever figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light, there may not be a heck of a lot that we could do with it. That's what Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (dude sounds like a polymath for having a good head about medicine and high-energy physics) has determined.The problem is hydrogen, which exists...

Read More

NASA will bomb the Moon tomorrow

(Sounds like a Weekly World News headline, don't it? :-) I'm praying that we will keep having clear skies until later tomorrow, 'cuz at around 7:30 a.m. EDT (and 4:30 in the morning for y'all on the West Coast) NASA's LCROSS mission will literally "shoot the Moon". LCROSS - short for "Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite -is looking for frozen water and other potentially...

Read More

Want to launch your own satellite into orbit?

For $8,000 you can purchase the TubeSat Personal Satellite from Interorbital Systems. Then you outfit your satellite however you like, and send it back to Interorbital Systems where it will be scheduled for orbital insertion aboard a NEPTUNE 30 vehicle (set to begin launch next year). Your satellite and 31 others will be hurled into an orbit 192 miles above the surface of...

Read More

"That's one small step for a man..."

"...one giant leap for mankind."(And before anybody gives me grief over it, in the past few years audio analysis has determined that Armstrong did indeed say "step for a man" :-)Forty years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, with the assistance of a few hundred thousand of their good friends back on Earth, fulfilled...

Read More

Perhaps we should call it the "International Still Suit"?

Thanks to a newly-tested and approved recycling system aboard the International Space Station, its long-term crews are now able to drink water recovered from urine, sweat and breath exhalation. It's the first time that water has been acquired and imbibed in space in such a manner.The new system takes the combined urine of the crew from the toilet, moves it to a big tank, where the water is boiled off, and the vapor collected. The rest of contaminants...

Read More

Bat may have ridden shuttle into space

When the Space Shuttle Discovery blasted into orbit two days ago, it might have taken this bat along for the ride. NASA technicians spotted the flying rodent clawed up against the vehicle's external tank during inspections. And it was thought that it would eventually take fly off on its own.But as Discovery roared from the launch pad, a tiny black speck was spotted clinging...

Read More

Two satellites collide in space over Siberia

At least 600 pieces of spaceborne shrapnel are now plaguing the sky, no thanks to an unprecedented collision between two satellites in low-Earth orbit.Early yesterday, 790 kilometers (490 miles) above Siberia, an inoperative Russian satellite called Cosmos 2251 smashed into Iridium33, a communications satellite. Ground radar is now tracking the hundreds of resulting bits...

Read More

Iran launches first satellite

Just six months after initial tests of the delivery vehicle, Iran has launched its first satellite into space. Early this morning a Safir-2 rocket lifted off from a launch facility somewhere in Iran, and shortly afterward successfully inserted the Omid satellite into low-Earth orbit.Naturally, some folks on this side of the pond are worrying about Iran using its newfound spaceborne capability to rain nuclear fire down on Washington D.C. or Tel Aviv....

Read More

And to think that I sometimes loose a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer...

A few days ago during a spacewalk at the International Space Station, astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper accidentally lost her bag of tools and it went floating away.But don't worry: Kevin Fetter of Brockville, Ontario found it last night! He was in his backyard with his satellite-observing gear, which was also armed with a good video camera. And Fetter not only spotted Stefanyshyn-Piper's bag as it scooted past the star eta Pisces, he filmed...

Read More

Soviet-era Buran could replace NASA space shuttle

Twenty years ago yesterday the Buran (shown landing at left), the Soviet Union's answer to the American-made NASA space shuttle system, launched from Kazakhstan for its first test flight. It wound up being its only mission to date. A few years later the fall of communism left the program in limbo. The only flight-worthy Buran was destroyed during a roof collapse at the...

Read More

NASA unveils final Space Shuttle flight schedule

There are ten more missions for the Space Shuttle fleet, as NASA has revealed the final slate of missions before the system is retired, after what will be 29 years of service. Endeavour is set to be the last one that will launch, with a mission scheduled for May 31, 2010 to bring spare parts to the International Space Station.After Endeavour lands, NASA plans to begin using the new Ares launch vehicle (currently in preparation for testing), which...

Read More

Sex in space "inevitable" says experts

A Japanese firm is offering weddings in space beginning next year, and now officials with both state-sponsored space agencies and private corporations are beginning to openly concede that sexual intercourse beyond the confines of the Earth is going to happen... if it hasn't already (NASA is tight-lipped about whether it's taken place on the International Space Station or a shuttle flight).Of especially great concern is what will happen on a long-term...

Read More