When Alexey Leonov made the world’s first spacewalk in 1965, it was hailed as yet another great success for the USSR in the space race against America. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that the west found out that while it may well have been made …
Interstellar Space Arks – Humanities Exodus From Earth
Earlier this year, Professor Stephen Hawking warned the human race that, unless we found a way to colonise another planet in the next hundred years, we would face a very real threat of extinction. He said: “With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is …
Hubble Trouble – How did the Space Telescope Mirror End Up Flawed ?
In April of 1990 the American Shuttle Discovery launched up from the Earth, into a higher orbit than ever before, to deploy a special payload: the Hubble Space Telescope. Above even the thinnest part of the atmosphere, Hubble would be able to see far-off stars and galaxies without distortion and …
How Australia Helped Save Apollo 13
When you mention the words “Apollo” and “NASA” most people will immediately think of America, that big U.. S.. A.. on the side of the Saturn V rockets at take off is an awe inspiring sight and a great piece of national branding but success in Space requires a global …
Salyut 7 – The forgotten rescue of a dead space station
In 1985 one of the most audacious space rescue missions was launched by the Soviets to recover a space station that had been dead for months due to an unknown fault. A feat that was unparalleled in space exploration and rewrote the books on what was thought possible: and yet, …
Will space junk end our modern way of life ? – The Kessler Syndrome
Space aint what it used to be, mainly because just like here on the earth, we are slowly filling the most important part just above us, with junk. After sixty years of space travel, flight debris, or space junk, has accumulated around the Earth, to the point that it’s becoming …
What Happened on the Moon Before Apollo ?
The Apollo landings from 1969 to 1972 marked a high point in lunar exploration but Apollo didn’t just rock up on to the moon out of the blue, it took many, many missions by probes and landers over the preceding years to establish if we could send men to the …
Was the space shuttle program doomed from the beginning ?
When the space shuttle was announced in 1972 it was seen as the space vehicle to make low earth orbit space travel and living in space an everyday reality. But in hindsight many now believe that it was a failed project that was hamstrung by lack of funding and interest …