On the 20th of August 1977, Voyager 2 was launched, then on the 5th of September 1977 Voyager 1 was launched. Their mission would take advantage of a favourable planetary alignment to explore Jupiter and Saturn, then during the mission the destination was changed so that Voyager 2 would fly …
How Different Are Space Computers From Those Used on Earth?
Without the Apollo guidance computer we would not have gotten to the moon and back. Today It might be vastly out gunned by a simple smartphone but that’s not the point, it was made to do a job and the way it did it influenced computers for decades to come. …
Are Space Elevators Still a Thing for the Future?
Sometimes, some things seem like really good idea in principle, up until someone points out that those pesky laws of physics mean that it is actually much, much harder to do than it looks. One of those ideas is the Space elevator, something that’s been around as an idea since …
Will SpaceX Starlink Have Too Many Satellites in Orbit?
On the 3rd October 1957 the earth had one satellite, the moon. On the 4th October 1957 it had two with the addition of the Soviet Sputnik-1, the world’s first artificial satellite and although it only stayed in orbit for 22 days, it opened the floodgates and today we have …
What Will Happen to Voyager and Others in the Far Future?
Right now there are at least 5 man made objects that are on course to leave our solar system, two of them Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have already crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the solar wind and the interstellar wind are in equilibrium which some say is a …
Why Did the Apollo Landers Look So Odd?
To many apollo lunar lander was the epitome of the moon missions and one of the oddest looking spacecraft that have ever been built, with some saying that it looked like some weird robotized insect or fake and just too flimsy to be used as a space craft. But the …
Apollos Most Critical Rocket Engine
During all of the manned Apollo moon missions just one engine was classed as so critical even the most insignificant or minor alterations had to be signed off by the very highest management in NASA. That engine was the lunar ascent engine that lifted the ascent module from the lunar …
The End of the ISS is Coming but Why and What Will Replace it?
So now we know what the fate of the International Space Station will be, around the 2030 mark, SpaceX will de-orbit the ISS and it will burn up in the atmosphere creating the most expensive man-made fireball in history, as about 150 billion dollars of hardware will light up the …
Why is it Still So Hard to Land on the Moon?
How hard can it be to safely land on the moon? after all, it’s not like we haven’t done it before. Since 2013 there have been at least nine attempts at a soft landing on the moon by China, India, Japan, Israel as well as the US and Russia, if …
How many Apollo artifacts should we save?
Back in January 2021, NASA announced that MLP-2, one of the three Mobile launch platforms that carried over fifty Apollo and shuttle missions was being demolished despite its historical importance because NASA quite simply had nowhere to put it. Roll on to May 2023 and NASA announced that MLP-3 which …