So you want to be an astronaut. You’re not making your decision in a vacuum. NASA is in the middle of an unprecedented promotion campaign, with press conferences, media availabilities, YouTube videos, press releases, and pull-out-all-the-stops outreach to students, from…
Wednesday, March 24, 2021: Kamala Harris, in her role as “first female vice president,” wokes the International Space Station (ISS) with a video teleconference to female astronauts Kate Rubins and Shannon Walker. It is still Women’s History Month after all,…
Last week NASA announced that they had signed a Joint Spaceflight Safety Agreement with Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to help regulate low-Earth orbit traffic patterns and enhance the safety of NASA spacecraft as they attempt to launch through the…
Good news from NASA. The Thursday, March 18, 2021, Green Run hot fire test of the Artemis Space Launch System (SLS) core rocket was everything they needed it to be, and more. And it needed to be everything they it…
My pulse is presently hitting a 7 on the Ritcher scale, and I can’t remember when it’s time for my dose of anti-anxiety pills. I think I wrote my password down in an email I sent to myself. Open email….
Thursday, March 11, 2021. In the wee hours of this morning (3:13 a.m. EST), B1058, the latest SpaceX Falcon 9 mission, thundered skywards from Space Launch Complex (SLC) 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Today’s launch marks the 21st…
Space exploration is a lot about hurry up and wait. Years and years of concept design and planning for launch vehicles and payloads, years and years of hopeful lobbying to acquire and then protect funding, patient pauses waiting for favorable…
It’s Wednesday, March 3, and SpaceX’s Starship Serial Number 10 (SN-10) launches from Boca Chica spaceport. There’s a flash of incandescent light, a gush of dark smoke, and 165 feet of gleaming stainless steel rocket ship lifts skywards atop a…
Thursday, February 18, 2021, 3:15 pm ET. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission enters orbit around the red planet and prepares to insert the complex skycrane/rover/helicopter package into the thin Martian atmosphere. The heat shield functions perfectly, the parachute deploys, the back…