Courtesy Ball Aerospace.
A closely held secret among journalists is that, once you write a story, the mind tends to shed the details rather hastily. And so, despite seeming authoritative -- and actually being rather authoritative -- for the duration of a given story and for a day or two afterward, it fades fast. Hence the…
Rosetta's view from cruising altitude
Humanity’s second-ever comet landing happens today when the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft (technically, the Philae lander) touches down on the comet Churumov-Gerasimenko at 16:00 UTC, or 11 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Pacific to you civilians. Tune in to the ESA website for live shots and people speaking in heavy accents.
Wait,…
SpaceShipTwo wreckage, Oct. 31, 2014 (via BBC)
It's only been a couple of hours since Virgin Galactic lost its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. The names of the pilots -- one dead, one clinging to life -- have yet to be released. I got the initial word via Twitter, a retweet of @spacecom via Alan Stern and some others. CNN,…
Shuttle astronauts prepare to install COSTAR during the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in December 1993. (courtesy NASA)
After finishing up my moderating duties at Compliance Week 2014, I put on my running stuff and headed to the National Mall, destination National Air and Space Museum. The aim was to see something very specific, an…
NASA sent out a press release with two Mars-related news items yesterday. Whether this was an attempt to bury the bad news, you decide.
First, the good news: An erstwhile freshwater lake in what's now Gale Crater, whose rocks the Curiosity rover sampled, wasn't too acidic to have harbored life maybe 4 billion years ago. If…