Category Archives: Space Exploration

The complete descent and landing of Apollo 11

Apollo Flight Journal channel published a detailed video that shows every second of the complete descent and landing of Apollo 11, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969. The video combines data from the onboard computer for altitude and pitch angle (you can see both altitude and pitch angle […]

Comet-Rise, the rise of Comet NEOWISE from the ISS

Have you ever seen a comet-rise? This stunning real-time video shows the rise of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) from the International Space Station (ISS). As the ISS orbits the Earth, Comet NEOWISE rises behind the Earth’s body, above the horizon.

Comet NEOWISE and noctilucent clouds – something we’ve never seen before

Russian space agency Roscosmos published spectacular photos of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) and noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) above our beautiful planet Earth. This is something we’ve never seen before. Forming about 45-55 miles (75-90 km) above polar regions in summer, noctilucent clouds are Earth’s uppermost clouds and only visible around twilight. PMCs […]

Spectacular comet photo from the ISS

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner published a spectacular comet photo on his Twitter account (@ivan_mks63). He tweeted both in Russian and in English and said “During the next revolution I tried to capture the C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) comet a bit closer, the brightest one over the last 7 years. Its tail is quite clearly visible from […]

New Horizons shows nearby stars from an unearthly perspective

NASA’s New Horizons space probe is currently the farthest human-made object that still able to take photographs. It was launched on January 19, 2006. As of June 14, 2020, it is about 6.973 billion kilometers (4.332 billion miles) away from Earth. This is about 46.61 AU, or Astronomical Unit, the distance between the Earth and […]

NASA’s Plan to Build a Base Camp on the Moon Sounds Like Sci-Fi, But It’s Real

If we’re ever going to make Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars a reality, we first need to figure out an essential component of the plan: how to get there. After all, it’s somewhere between 34 and 140 million miles away from Earth. The moon is barely spitting distance closer, relatively speaking-but it’s a start. […]

Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space now the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean

Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space on October 11, 1984, now also becomes the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean, the Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench. She also became only the eighth person ever to reach the Challenger Deep.

Human spaceflight is a risk worth taking, says ESA head

On 12 April, the International Day of Human Space Flight commemorates the first human – Yuri Gagarin – travelling to space in 1961, and the inaugural Space Shuttle mission on the same day in 1981. Since Gagarin, humans have flown to space hundreds of times, including six missions to the moon, and have maintained a […]

SpaceX Crew Dragon arrives at the ISS

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule arrives at the International Space Station (ISS) following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule (named Endeavour by the crew) docked automatically to the ISS, no assistance needed.