With commercial spaceflight companies now taking older people to space, it’s timely to consider the potential physical impact space flight might have on them.
Without a magnetic field, the Moon’s surface is exposed to solar wind. These could have been depositing resources like water and potential rocket fuel on the Moon’s surface for billions of years.
In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron penned a spoken word song called ‘Whitey on the Moon’ that criticized the 1969 Moon landing. A hip-hop scholar explains why the song still reverberates today.
It wasn’t long after Jeff Bezos announced his plans to go to space that Sir Richard Branson joined in, setting a launch date to beat Bezos by nine days.
Rappers have been taking listeners on lyrical journeys to outer space for decades. A hip-hop scholar says their music helps inspire more students to pursue careers among the stars.
Several spaceflights scheduled over the next few years will take non-astronauts to space. But it’s not certain this privilege will ever extend to anyone beyond the extremely wealthy.
It’s 60 years since Gagarin’s world-first return from space. The cosmonaut never did make it to Australia, but his huge feat was celebrated here by many, despite tensions with the USSR.
Perseverance follows in the tracks of Curiosity. The latter’s touchdown on Martian soil in 2012 marked the first successful use of several pioneering space technologies.
Gray mouse lemurs are more closely related to humans than mice. They also have the ability to hibernate, and researchers are hoping to learn how to transfer that ability to humans.
Bacteria can become more deadly and antibiotic-resilient in space. And while more research is needed to figure out how severe the risks are, they could be catastrophic.
The distance between the ISS and Earth is the same as about 3,850 football fields. To bring the station down, rockets will lower it a bit, and then gravity will send it crashing the rest of the way.
SpaceX’s launch of astronauts to the International Space Station will make it the first private company to launch humans to space. The effort has ramifications for NASA and spaceflight in general.