Space telescopes are expensive things to develop and build and can take years to finish, just look at the James Web Space Telescope, that started development in 1996 for a launch in 2007 on a $500 million budget, its now looking at a launch in 2021 and the budget has …
Could the Crew of Columbia Have Been Rescued?
The Columbia disaster of January 2003 was not only the second total loss of a space shuttle and crew, it also sounded the death knell for the whole space shuttle program. The reason being was that the shuttle had always been a work in progress and that after 31 years …
Will NASA’s Asteroid mission save us in the future? – Project DART
“It’s a 100 per cent certainty we’ll be hit by a devastating asteroid, but we’re not 100 per cent sure when.” That was a statement from the B612 Foundation in April 2018. Now with all our energies seemingly focused on the current biological threat we shouldn’t forget that there are …
How do you Protect Spacecraft from the Radiation of Space?
Although we dream colonising the moon, travelling around the solar system and one day beyond to the stars, space is a dangerous place and not least because of the radiation from our sun and galactic cosmic rays. We only found out about the bands of trapped ionising radiation that surround …
Apollo’s Forgotten Computer – The LVDC
Watching a Saturn V launch is still an awe-inspiring sight but there is far more going on than meets the eye. The Saturn V was far too complicated to fly by hand but contrary to popular belief it wasn’t the Apollo guidance computer or AGC in the command module doing …
What does it take to land on a comet?
There have been some pretty spectacular space missions since we’ve had the ability to get off of planet earth but few have attempted the complexity and precision required to catch up with a comet travelling at up to 135,000 km/h, enter an orbit around it and then land a probe …
How will the internet work in Space? – The Interplanetary Internet
As we reach the 30th anniversary of the world wide web, there is a quiet revolution taking place above our heads as the future of the internet expands out into space and not just up to the ISS but the moon and beyond and into what will become the interplanetary …
How do Spacecraft Photograph the Planets & get the Images Back to Earth?
Over the past 50 odd years we sent robotic probes to explore our solar system and they have sent back amazing close up images of the planets, asteroids and comets but how did they take these images and what sorts of issues are there in taking photos in deep space …
What happens to old spacecraft?
There is always a big flurry of interest when a new spacecraft is launched, like the SpaceX Falcon 9 with the Dragon crew capsule a few days back but as they say todays news is tomorrows chip wrapper so what happens to all the old spacecraft, do they just hang …
What Were the Real Reasons Why We Stopped Going to the Moon
Next year, 2019, will be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, since then just 12 men have walked on the lunar surface in 6 missions covering a period lasting less than 3 years. The Apollo project at it’s peak employed over 400,000 people in some …