In a recent photo essay for the New Yorker magazine, author Keith Gessen and photographer Andrew McConnell share what life is like for the residents around the launch facility and where Soyuz capsules land in Kazakhstan. Read the article for a brief history of the Baikonur spaceport and observations from the photographer’s15 visits to observe […]
There was a time when building a telescope was a rite of passage for budding astronomers, much as building a radio was the coming age for electronics folks. These days, many things are cheaper to buy than build, even though we do enjoy building anything we can. Orion was a big name in telescopes for […]
We’re guessing most readers can cite things from their youth which gave them an interest in technology, and spurred on something which became a career or had a profound impact on their life. Public engagement activities for technology or science have a crucial role in bringing forth the next generations of curious people into those […]
Lunar Module pilot Charles Duke saluting the US flag during Apollo 16. (Credit: NASA) Imagine: you spent years training for a sojourn to the Moon, flew there on top of a Saturn V rocket as part of Apollo 16, to ultimately land on the lunar surface. You then spend the next few days on the […]
When you were five, you probably spotted your best friend running at “a million miles an hour” when they beat everybody at the local athletics meet. You probably haven’t seen anything that fast snice. According to NASA, though, a group of citizen scientists spotted a celestial object doing just that! The group of citizen scientists […]
There may not be many radio astronomy printouts that have achieved universal fame, but the one from Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope upon which astronomer [Jerry R. Ehman] wrote “WOW!” is definitely one of them. It showed an intense one-off burst that defied attempts to find others like it, prompting those who want to […]
Recently Canada’s Canadarm2 caught its 50th spacecraft in the form of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo vessel since 2009. Although perhaps not the most prominent part of the International Space Station (ISS), the Canadarm2 performs a range of very essential functions on the outside of the ISS, such as moving equipment around and supporting astronauts […]
One of the most sought after substances in the Universe is water – especially in its liquid form – as its presence on a planet makes the presence of life (as we know it) significantly more likely. While there are potentially oceans worth of liquid water on e.g. Jupiter’s moon Europa, for now Mars is […]
Americans certainly remember Sputnik. At a time when the world was larger and scarier, the Soviets had a metal basketball flying over the United States and the rest of the world. It made people nervous, but it was also a tremendous scientific achievement. However, it wasn’t the plan to use it as the first orbiter, […]