Want to go to Mars? You’ll have to fly there on a monster. Fortunately, this monster is being designed to carry and care for humans, not eat them! A Space Launch System, or SLS, is actually not a new idea, … Continue reading
NASA called on the bright young minds of college students to help develop an inflatable heat shield that will help protect the payload it carries. How will HIAD get us one step closer to Mars? Read more to find out! Continue reading
Elon Musk has a net worth of $11.9 billion while Richard Branson has a net worth of $4.8 billion. If they stacked their respective fortunes in $1 bills atop each other, the tower would reach six million miles, almost 25 times the distance between the earth and the moon. And that is, in a metaphorical way, exactly what the two plan to do. Continue reading
Two types of pressurized suits are in use today: “escape suits” worn inside the craft during launch and landing, and full “EVA” suits worn for working in the vacuum of space. NASA escape suits are colored International Orange for easy spotting by rescuers in the event of an emergency landing. Continue reading
Space waste, space junk, orbital debris…whatever you call this orbiting mass of objects, they are a big issue. Space waste doesn’t just make earth’s orbital corridors look untidy, it poses a very real threat to the future of space exploration … Continue reading
“Hoping to beat the Americans to the moon before 1970, Soviet rocket engineer Sergey Korolyov worked in secret to plan the mighty N-1, an equal to the American Saturn V booster. In 1966 however, the sudden death of Korolyov threw … Continue reading
Some space advocates argue that private property rights on the Moon and other bodies are essential to the future of space development. Is there a way to accept property claims under the current treaty regime? “There’s maybe a loophole here” for space property rights, Rand Simberg said. Continue reading
No matter how exciting your plans are for New Year’s, two NASA spacecraft have you beat – they’ve got a date with the moon. After more than three months of spaceflight, NASA’s twin Grail probes are set to start orbiting the moon this weekend, with Grail-A arriving Saturday (Dec. 31) and Grail-B following on Sunday (Jan. 1). Continue reading
After spending more than 240 days “sailing” around Earth, NASA’s NanoSail-D — a nanosatellite that deployed NASA’s first-ever solar sail in low-Earth orbit — has successfully completed its Earth orbiting mission. Continue reading
As the United States settles in for the long winter ahead in American space launch capabilities, after a summer that witnessed the end of the Shuttle program, two radically different visions for the future have emerged, put forward by two equally different entities. Continue reading