Space and astronomy news
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, Universe Today has been featuring “13 MORE Things That Saved Apollo 13,” discussing different turning points of the mission with NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill. Today, we let Jerry have the final word as he talks about a different aspect of the Apollo 13 mission. Written …
Student Space Flight teams at NASA Wallops – Will Refly on SpaceX CRS 5 Science experiments from these students representing 18 school communities across America were selected to fly aboard the Orbital Sciences Cygnus Orb-3 spacecraft bound for the ISS and which were lost when the rocket exploded uexpectedly after launch from NASA Wallops, VA, …
I love all things space related. I’m excited by the jaw-dropping images from the Hubble, awed by the Kepler spacecraft’s discoveries, and to be honest, almost moved to tears by the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory. As a boy, the Space Shuttle program seemed like science fiction come to life. Behind these peak moments in discovery, …
Continue reading “Giveaway: The Shirtsleeve Invention by Gloria Beasley Lauston”
Last year, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos announced that he had located some of the Apollo F-1 rocket engines and planned to recover them. He and his Bezos Expedition team were successful in recovering engines that helped power Apollo astronauts to the Moon and have now brought “a couple of your F-1s home,” Bezos said in …
Continue reading “Apollo Rocket Engines Recovered from Atlantic Ocean Floor”
U.S. Congresswoman Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) announced today, Sunday Jan. 22, that she will step down from Congress later this week to continue recuperating from critical brain injuries she suffered during a deadly assassination attempt a year ago in Tucson, Arizona. She announced the resignation on her official congressional website and in a poignant YouTube …
[/caption] When cosmonauts and astronauts now return from a long-duration space mission on board the International Space Station, they are always coming home on a Soyuz capsule, landing in northern Kazakhstan. The Kazakh Steppe is known for its bitter winters (I just checked the local weather in Ayagoz, Kazakhstan and there is currently a blizzard …
Continue reading “Gallery: Cosmonaut Winter Survival Training”
[/caption] Back in 1989, amateur astronomer Toney Burkhart found out that Clyde Tombaugh was going to be giving a talk in San Francisco, just a short distance from Burkhart’s home. Trouble was, he found out only about 10 minutes before the presentation was going to start, so he rushed over and arrived just in time …
Continue reading “Clyde Tombaugh’s Ten Special Commandments for Planet Hunters”
[/caption] Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell was awarded the Lincoln Leadership Prize by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum foundation last week, and while humbled to receive the award, Lovell said he really is just an ordinary person. “I was just at the right place at the right time with the right credentials; there was …
Continue reading “A Conversation with Jim Lovell, part 2: Looking Back”
Note: To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, for ten days, Universe Today will feature highlights from two year slices of the life of the Hubble, focusing on its achievements as an astronomical observatory. Today’s article looks at the period April 1994 to April 1996. After the famous Apollo 8 “Earthrise” image, …
[/caption] One of the wonderful things about space exploration and astronomy is how it brings people together across cultures, countries and even languages. Almost all of the current planetary missions — Phoenix, Cassini, and Dawn, for example — are collaborative efforts between scientists and space agencies around the world. And all of our explorations, whether …
Continue reading “We All Say “Excited!” In The Same Language”