The Juno spacecraft was launched towards Jupiter in August of 2011 as part of the New Frontiers series of spacecraft, on what would originally have been a 7-year mission, including a nearly 5 year cruise to the planet. After a mission extension, it’s currently orbiting Jupiter, allowing for many more years of scientific data to […]
After the fire and fury of liftoff, when a spacecraft is sailing silently through space, you could be forgiven for thinking the hard part of the mission is over. After all, riding what’s essentially a domesticated explosion up and out of Earth’s gravity well very nearly pushes physics and current material science to the breaking […]
If you were alive when 2001: A Space Odyssey was in theaters, you might have thought it didn’t really go far enough. After all, in 1958, the US launched its first satellite. The first US astronaut went up in 1961. Eight years later, Armstrong put a boot on the moon’s surface. That was a lot of progress […]
Starting on June 12, 2025, the NASA Spot the Station website will no longer provide ISS sighting information, per a message recently sent out. This means no information on sighting opportunities provided on the website, nor will users subscribed via the website receive email or text notifications. Instead anyone interested in this kind of information […]
Saw what you want about the wisdom of keeping a 50-year-old space mission going, but the dozen or so people still tasked with keeping the Voyager mission running are some major studs. That’s our conclusion anyway, after reading about the latest heroics that revived a set of thrusters on Voyager 1 that had been offline […]
What a long, strange trip it’s been for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Bruce Wilmore, who finally completed their eight-day jaunt to space after 289 days. The duo returned to Earth from the ISS on Tuesday along with two other returning astronauts in a picture-perfect splashdown, complete with a dolphin-welcoming committee. For the benefit of […]
In all likelihood, asteroid 2024 YR4 will slip silently past the Earth. Based on the data we have so far, there’s an estimated chance of only 2.1% to 2.3% that it will collide with the planet on December 22nd, 2032. Under normal circumstances, if somebody told you there was a roughly 98% chance of something […]
There are no two ways about it—space will kill you if you give it half a chance. More than land, sea, or air, the space environment is entirely hostile to human existence. Precision-engineered craft are the bare minimum just to ensure human survival. Even still, between the vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites, and equipment failures, there are […]