Last week was Apollo 13’s 50th anniversary – the most “successful failure” in the history of space exploration. On April 27, 2016, former NASA astronaut and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell made a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and told the story of the legendary Apollo 13 flight. Here’s the full video […]
Category Archives: Space Exploration
Soviet N1 Rocket – a 3D model
A 3D model of the Soviet N1 Rocket, which was intended to enable crewed travel to the Moon and beyond, Soviet counterpart to the United States’ mighty Saturn V, which was used by NASA between 1967 and 1973 during lunar landings.
Venice from Space, 2019 vs 2020
The European Space Agency (ESA) published an image showing Italy’s beautiful Venice from space, April 2019 vs April 2020. The 2020 version shows the Grand Canal of Venice and Giudecca Canal (Venetian: Canal de ła Zueca) are empty of boats.
Apollo 13 booster impact experiment – footage by NASA
The story of Apollo 13 (called a “successful failure” by the mission commander Jim Lovell) goes beyond a tale of survival. The mission also successfully completed a science investigation that is still helping to inform our understanding of the Moon to this day. Early in Apollo 13’s voyage, Mission Control sent the spacecraft’s empty S-IVB […]
Moon rocks could help reveal how life evolved on Earth
…and may enable us to resurrect extinct species Duncan T Odom, University of Cambridge Life is the last thing you would associate with the eternally dark craters of the lunar poles. But these craters could hold the key to explaining how complex, multi-cellular organisms evolved on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, affording unimaginable […]
Astronaut Chris Hadfield reviews 12 popular Space movies, including “Gravity” and “Interstellar”
In the video published on March 24, 2020, by the Vanity Fair magazine below, Canadian retired astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), Chris Hadfield reviews space movies, including “Gravity” and “Interstellar”.
Would it be immoral to send out a generation starship?
If human beings are ever to colonise other planets – which might become necessary for the survival of the species, given how far we have degraded this one – they will almost certainly have to use generation ships: spaceships that will support not just those who set out on them, but also their descendants. The […]
Highest-Resolution Mars Panorama Yet by the Curiosity Rover
Between November 24 and December 1, 2019, NASA’s Curiosity Rover has captured its highest-resolution Mars panorama yet. The composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of the Martian landscape and it is composed of more than 1,000 images.
Women Breaking the Glass Ceiling in STEM Fields
It may be a man’s world but, let’s face it, far more often than not, it’s the women who are running it. It’s the women who provide the brains as well as the heart, the wisdom and the care. However, for all the remarkable contributions women have made, and continue to make, to human history, […]
Freeman Dyson who imagined alien megastructures dies at 96
Sad news… Freeman Dyson, the English-born American theoretical physicist, and mathematician who imagined hypothetical alien megastructure called “Dyson Sphere” died on February 28, 2020. Freeman was 96 years old.
