A history primer: NASA’s robust Earth Science program now under attack...
As NASA’s budget comes under debate this Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s clear the agency’s Earth Science budget will be a flash point. In their budget authorization mark-up for...
View ArticleUW-led ‘super group’ boosts NASA’s quest for extraterrestrial life
The search for extraterrestrial life has been on NASA’s agenda for years. Missions such as Kepler and Spitzer have captured the imagination of astrobiologists and everyday people alike, and have...
View ArticleBlue Origin soars into space from West Texas
Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, announced late Wednesday night the first flight of its New Shepard spacecraft into space. Powered by a BE-3 engine, the spacecraft flew to 307,000 feet, the...
View ArticleNASA’s futuristic EM drive is exciting, but skepticism warranted
There’s been much ado this week about an article published by NASASpaceflight.com which takes a deeper look at an electromagnetic propulsion drive, or EM drive, and concludes the technology has been...
View ArticleElon Musk is trying to save the world, and the early returns are promising
What are some of the biggest existential problems facing the world? Three of them are extinction, energy and the environment. And when you step back and look what Elon Musk is doing, he’s trying to...
View ArticleA Europa lander is possible, JPL scientists say, and Congress appears likely...
Ever since the Galileo spacecraft began exploring Jupiter and its moons 20 years ago scientists have been fascinated by Europa. Now, finally, we may be getting close to seeing a mission to Jupiter’s...
View ArticleFor the first time a new book opens the opaque window into Elon Musk
Today the first real biography of Elon Musk, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, is available. Authored by Bloomberg Businessweek tech reporter Ashlee Vance the book is...
View ArticleThe House budget for NASA plants the seeds of a program to finally find life...
On Wednesday the U.S. House Appropriations Committee will “mark up” its 2016 budget proposal for NASA, and much of the attention will focus on cuts to the agency’s Earth science budget and not fully...
View ArticleThere are football-shaped moons whizzing all over the Pluto system
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is fast closing in on Pluto, but just before it arrives the Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered some fascinating details about the dwarf planet and its five moons. And...
View ArticleFor the first time, fly over the dwarf world Ceres
In March NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at the dwarf planet Ceres, and now it’s starting to send back images as it slowly moves closer to the world. The spacecraft first mapped Ceres from an altitude...
View ArticleNow there’s a 3-mile-high ‘pyramid-shaped mountain’ on Ceres
In addition to the fantastically mysterious cluster of bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres, there now appears in NASA photos another very unique feature described as a ‘pyramid-shaped mountain.’...
View ArticleNeil deGrasse Tyson: “Do I go to Star Wars conventions and dress up like a...
Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world’s foremost science communicator, recently visited Houston. I had a chance to catch up with him, and among other things I found out the man likes his pizza with cheese all...
View ArticleWatch SpaceX launch and landing attempt live
9:25 a.m. UPDATE: The rocket blew up. Some initial thoughts are here. ORIGINAL ENTRY: This morning, at 9:21 a.m. CT, SpaceX will attempt to launch its seventh resupply mission to the International...
View ArticleSpaceX rocket blows up less than three minutes after launch
It’s been a long time, but SpaceX lost a cargo-carrying rocket today. Although it’s not clear what happened, the rocket blew up 2 minutes and 19 seconds into its launch this morning (see below). Elon...
View ArticleHere’s why the loss of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is a big deal for NASA
The loss of today’s Falcon 9 rocket is a critical one for NASA. The vehicle carried 4,000 pounds in supplies, from food and water to about 70 scientific experiments to hardware for the space station...
View ArticleRockets are bombs, and after 60 years spaceflight remains a nascent,...
Space lies a mere 60 miles above the planet’s surface, so tantalizingly close. It shouldn’t be that hard to reach, right? After all, humans have sent rockets into space for nearly six decades. Yet as...
View ArticleRussian space leader to America: The only hope is “Soyuz”
Dmitry Rogozin is the deputy prime minister of Russia, in charge of its defense and space industry. You may recall him from comments last year, as tensions over Ukraine heated up, that NASA astronauts...
View ArticleRussian rocket launches much needed supplies to the space station
12:05 A.M. FRIDAY UPDATE: The Progress spacecraft made it safely to orbit, right on time. When it docks with the International Space Station in two days it will deliver 3,100 pounds of much-needed...
View ArticleOur first real look at Pluto, and it’s pretty incredible
A week before it zips by Pluto the New Horizons spacecraft snagged this image, at just over 5 million miles away. This is about the same area of the planet the New Horizons spacecraft will observe next...
View ArticleNASA announces first four commercial crew astronauts
Today NASA announced that four veteran astronauts would be its first crew members to fly on SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft. During the first of these flights the NASA astronauts will...
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