Collaborate Disseminate
Sometimes it’s hard to read the tea leaves of what’s going on with high-profile space missions. Weighted down as they are with the need to be careful with taxpayer money …read more Continue reading Flipped Bit Could Mark the End of Voyager 1‘s Interstellar Mission
Everyone knows that the most important part of a tech demo is to make the right impression, and the team over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) definitely had this …read more Continue reading NASA’s Tech Demo Streams First Video From Deep Space via Laser
In 2015 NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft provided humanity with the first up-close views of Pluto, passing just 12,472 km (7,750 mi) from the surface. What had always been little more …read more Continue reading Change of Plans for New Horizons Sparks Debate
When NASA’s Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean yesterday afternoon, it marked the end of a journey that started decades ago. The origins of the Orion capsule can …read more Continue reading NASA Aces Artemis I, But the Journey Has Just Begun
Since the Apollo 17 crew returned from the Moon in 1972, human spaceflight has been limited to low Earth orbit (LEO). Whether they were aboard Skylab, Mir, the Space Shuttle, …read more Continue reading NASA Sets Eyes on Deep Space With Admin Shuffle
The rest of the media were reporting on an asteroid named 16 Psyche last month worth $10 quintillion. Oddly enough they reported in July 2019 and again in February 2018 that the same asteroid was worth $700 quintillion, so it seems the space rock market is similar to cryptocurrency in …read more
Today we’re sad to report that one of the primary support cables at the Arecibo Observatory has snapped, nudging the troubled radio telescope closer to a potential disaster. The Observatory’s 300 meter reflector dish was already badly in need of repairs after spending 60 years exposed to the elements in …read more
Continue reading Tensions High After Second Failed Cable At Arecibo
Ham radio operators love to push the boundaries of their equipment. A new ham may start out by making a local contact three miles away on the 2m band, then talk to somebody a few hundred miles away on 20m. Before long, they may find themselves chatting to fellow operators …read more
Continue reading It Came From Outer Space: Listening to the Deep Space Network
As you’re no doubt aware, humans are a rather noisy species. Not just audibly, like in the case of somebody talking loudly when you’re in a movie theater, but also electromagnetically. All of our wireless transmissions since Marconi made his first spark gap broadcast in 1895 have radiated out into space, and anyone who’s got a sensitive enough ear pointed into our little corner of the Milky Way should have no trouble hearing us. Even if these extraterrestrial eavesdroppers wouldn’t be able to understand the content of our transmissions, the sheer volume of them would be enough to indicate that …read more
Continue reading Flagging Down Aliens with World’s Biggest Laser Pointer
If the heady early days of space exploration taught us anything, it was how much we just didn’t know. Failure after failure mounted, often dramatic and expensive and sometimes deadly. Launch vehicles exploded, satellites failed to deploy, or some widget decided to give up the ghost at a crucial time, blinding a multi-million dollar probe and ending a mission long before any useful science was done. For the United States, with a deadline to meet for manned missions to the moon, every failure in the late 1950s and early 1960s was valuable, though, at least to the extent that it …read more
Continue reading Hacking When It Counts: The Pioneer Missions