We hate to admit it, but whenever we see an article about either Voyager spacecraft, our thoughts immediately turn to worst-case scenarios. One of these days, we’ll be forced to write obituaries for the plucky interstellar travelers, but today is not that day, even with news of yet another issue aboard Voyager 1 that threatens […]
China has a space station — it’s called Tiangong, the first module was launched in 2021, and it’s all going quite swimmingly, thank you very much. That’s essentially what we know about the orbital complex here in the West, as China tends to be fairly secretive when it comes to their activities in space. But […]
Venus hasn’t received nearly the same attention from space programs as Mars, largely due to its exceedingly hostile environment. Most electronics wouldn’t survive the 462 °C heat, never mind the intense atmospheric pressure and sulfuric acid clouds. With this in mind, NASA has been experimenting with the concept of a completely mechanical rover. The [Beardy […]
There’s no shortage of movies, TV shows, and books that show a dystopian future with corporations run amok in outer space with little or no effective oversight. Dune, The Expanse, and The Dispossessed spring to mind as predicting different aspects of this idea, but there are plenty of other warnings throughout sci-fi depicting this potential […]
As hackers, we’re always pulling stuff apart—sometimes just to see what it’s like inside. Most of us have seen the inside of a computer, television, and phone. These are all common items that we come into contact with every day. Fewer of us have dived inside real spacey satellite hardware, if only for the lack […]
As the current frontier of humanity in space, the International Space Station is heavily reliant on Earth not only for fresh supplies but also as a garbage disposal service for the various types of waste produced on the ISS by its human occupants. As future manned missions take humans further away from Earth, finding ways […]
Here’s the thing about radio signals. There is wild and interesting stuff just getting beamed around all over the place. Phrased another way, there are beautiful signals everywhere for those with ears to listen. We go about our lives oblivious to most of them, but some dedicate their time to teasing out and capturing these […]
Visualization of the Sun-Earth Lagrange points. Orbital mechanics is a fun subject, as it involves a lot of seemingly empty space that’s nevertheless full of very real forces, all of which must be taken into account lest one’s spacecraft ends up performing a sudden lithobraking maneuver into a planet or other significant collection of matter […]
Space is a challenging environment for semiconductors, but researchers have shown that a specific type of memristor (the hafnium oxide memristor, to be exact) actually reacts quite usefully when exposed to gamma radiation. In fact, it’s even able to leverage this behavior as a way to measure radiation exposure. In essence, it’s able to act […]