This piece originally appeared as part of my weekly newsletter, The Full Lid . If you liked it, and want a weekly down of pop culture enthusiasm, occasional ketchup recipes and me enjoying things, then check out the archive and sign up here. I have, of course, spent a good chunk of the week up to my …
Curiosity, on Mars, making it’s way through Artist’s Drive Valley. Looks like a nice day, and it’s this week’s Sunday Moment of Zen.
Specifically, the moon of asteroid 2004 BL86 which passed close to the Earth late in January. ‘Close’ this being space, was three times the distance between Earth and the Moon. That being said, the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, got some amazing footage not just of the asteroid but it’s moon. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y7CYf4X3Lo?feature=player_embedded] …
I’ve loved movies for as long as I’ve been conscious of having a brain. The first film I remember seeing was a taped-from-TV Betamax copy of Star Wars one of my mum’s patients had. I almost wore it out I watched it so many times. The cinema was, for the first chunk of my life, …
That’s a photo from Orion’s test flight earlier this week. NASA’s first manned spacecraft since the space shuttle, Orion is step one in a journey that we’ve wandered down no less than three times; putting humanity on Mars. I remember reading the issue of Spaceflight Magazine detailing Pathfinder, the President Bush-led initiative. The first President …
Even as manned, governmental, spaceflight moves ever further away from practicality, robotic spaceflight is having some extraordinary successes. The Curiosity rover is a standout, a car sized robot rover that has trundled around Mars for months. The images Curiosity has sent back are remarkable because of their immediacy. There’s no saluting spacesuited figure telling us …
The Apollo 1 fire still haunts NASA, its shadow cast over the entire history of American manned spaceflight, coloring accident investigation, astronaut safety, engineering, every element of the process. Manned spaceflight has lots of ghosts, and whilst Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White weren’t the first, they have stayed at the banquet for decades …