Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s return in a SpaceX capsule yesterday emanated symbolic meaning beyond even the substantive accomplishment of rescuing two Americans stuck in space. NASA scheduled the astronauts to spend about nine days in the heavens. Instead, they…
I don’t spend a lot of time in my La-Z-Boy being hypnotized by daytime TV. Ok, I’ve spent some time in my La-Z-Boy being hypnotized by daytime TV — at least enough to pick up that “hypnotized” line from the Tom…
Want to go to Mars? NASA is recruiting. Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA, consists of “simulated one-year Mars surface mission[s]” located right here on Earth, based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The upcoming mission…
On Wednesday at 6:05 p.m. local time, 70 million people watched breathlessly, glued to their screens, as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft hovered over the desolate landscape of the moon’s South Pole. Like a Pac-Man character, the craft was first above the…
We’ve all become accustomed to the calming — almost soporific — euphemisms that arrived with space exploration back in the 1960s. The euphemisms went along with the smiling, stoic bravery of the astronauts. Everything was “nominal,” until it wasn’t. At…
On Jan. 11, the United States and Japan unveiled plans to strengthen their alliance to counter threats from China. In a joint statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Japan Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi, and…
It’s Monday morning at the Space Force’s Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center — and it’s official. NASA has given up all hope of launching its “mega moon rocket” anytime soon and has begun the laborious process of…
Good news! NASA-funded technology, intended to develop a fabric that helps regulate temperatures in space gloves, is now being touted as an effective counter to the hot flashes, heavy sweating, and subsequent chills that frequently plague menopausal women. The phase-based…
Space organizations will soon send binary-encoded messages to space from radio telescopes, hoping they eventually reach intelligent aliens. A NASA-led team of scientists is sending the right message to the wrong place. A group called Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) is…
