The year 2012 marked the first achievement for private space ventures with SpaceX’s docking of their Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (which they in fact did twice). This year (2013), private companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic are gearing up to make even greater...
It’s been 43 years since the first human beings landed on the moon… And we’ve not been back since December 1972. It’s utterly baffling to me — this is the year 2012, and by now we should have flourishing lunar colonies, L5 space stations, and human explorers walking on the...
This is perhaps the greatest tribute to America’s Space Shuttle program that I have yet seen. An 8 minute video from Nature Videos (of the Nature science journal), it highlights every mission in the 30 year program–it’s good times and bad times, it’s triumphs and it’s tragedies. So turn up...
The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed this morning at 5:56am EDT on July 21, 2011, bringing to a close the halcyon days of Mankind’s exploration of space. Okay, I suppose it is a bit too harsh to say that this end’s the human exploration of space. The point is simply that,...
On July 20th, 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will touch down after a 12 day mission, marking the end of an era. Never again will one of these distinguished spacecraft grace the launch pad of Cape Canaveral, rocket through the sky above the Atlantic, or reach onward to that great...
The following video is actual video of an approach to Saturn and its moons, not 3D CGI or other computer animation. It’s real footage of Saturn, its rings, and moons. It was created from a compilation of actual photographs taken by the Cassini space probe in 2004. It is truly...
I just stumbled upon a rather interesting, weird, and wonderful little blog called Curious Expeditions (curiousexpeditions.org). According the site, they are “devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe.” While some of the posts are indeed a bit macabre, most (even the...
It is now the year 2010. Looking back at my childhood, I recall how excited I was about this year. In the 1980s, the year 2010 was envision as the beginning of brilliant era of manned space exploration and scientific discovery. We would have numerous orbiting space stations, a permanent...
