Collaborate Disseminate
Legendary astronaut John Young — who walked on the moon and piloted the first space shuttle — died Friday at the age of 87. schwit1 shares a nice profile from CBS News:
A naval aviator and test pilot, Young logged more than 15,275 hours flying time i… Continue reading John Young, Legendary Astronaut, Dies at Age 87
His work could help astronauts grow tomatoes on the Red Planet one day. Continue reading This Biologist Wants to Grow Vegetables on Mars
Invariably when we write about living on Mars, some ask why not go to the Moon instead? It’s much closer and has a generous selection of minerals. But its lack of an atmosphere adds to or exacerbates the problems we’d experience on Mars. Here, therefore, is a fun thought experiment about that age-old dream of living on the Moon.
The Moon has even less radiation protection than Mars, having practically no atmosphere. The lack of atmosphere also means that more micrometeorites make it to ground level. One way to handle these issues is to bury structures under …read more
“Just as on Earth, our feelings about Thanksgiving in space weren’t determined by the quality or the appearance of the meal—but by the people we shared it with.” Continue reading Happy Space Thanksgiving: How the Food-Stuffed Holiday Went Orbital
schwit1 shares an article from UPI:
India will make its second mission to the moon in 2018, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced this week. The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft consists of an orbiter, lander and rover configuration “to perfo… Continue reading India, China, and Japan Are All Planning Moon Missions
New submitter Zorro shares a report: Scientists have fantasised for centuries about humans colonising the moon. That day may have drawn a little closer after Japan’s space agency said it had discovered an enormous cave beneath the lunar surface that co… Continue reading Discovery of 50km Cave Raises Hopes For Human Colonisation of Moon
Ever hear of the Soviet Luna program? In the west, it was often called Lunik, if you heard about it at all. Luna was a series of unmanned moon probes launched between 1959 and 1976. There were at least 24 of them, and 15 were successful. Most of the failures were not reported or named. Luna craft have a number of firsts, but the one we are interested in is that it may have been the first space vehicle to be stolen — at least temporarily — in a cold war caper worthy of a James Bond novel.
Around 1960, …read more
Before astronauts go to Mars, they will return to the Moon, Vice President Mike Pence said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday and in a speech at the National Air and Space Museum today. He touts “humans exploration and discovery” as the new focus… Continue reading Vice President Pence Vows US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon
The Deep Space Gateway is scheduled to be built in the 2020s. Continue reading Russia Will Help NASA Build an Orbital Moon Station
Deep-voiced and aptly named [Scott Manley] posted a video about the computer hack that saved Apollo 14. Unlike some articles about the incident, [Scott] gets into the technical details in an entertaining way. If you don’t remember, Apollo 14 had an issue where the abort command button would occasionally signal when it shouldn’t.
The common story is that a NASA engineer found a way to reprogram the Apollo guidance computer. However, [Scott] points out that the rope memory in the computer wasn’t reprogrammable and there was no remote way to send commands to the computer anyway.
The initial patch had …read more
Continue reading The Longest Tech Support Call: Apollo 14 Computer Hack
