Anyone above the age of 50 remembers where they were when Neil Armstrong took his famous one small step on the moon. It was the culmination of an age-old dream, to fly through the sky and to set foot on another world. It seemed to belong entirely to the realm of fantasy to many adults [...]
You may have read that the Curiosity Mars rover is communicating with Earth mostly by relaying data through one of the spacecraft orbiting Mars, and wondered why that is so. Even if you haven’t wondered, I have! Hence this post. There are multiple reasons, of course, but the most important one is energy conservation. Even [...]
Quote: “This is just insane. The Internet is still totally exploding over what happened…” Rather than try to recap everything, I’m just going to point you to the two best web sources: the Curiosity site itself, and Emily Lakdawalla’s blog, the best source of information about solar system spacecraft there is. One note: there is [...]
In just a few more days, the largest and most complex spacecraft ever to land on Mars will either have six wheels on the ground or will be a smoking billion-dollar crater. I’ve posted this video before, but it’s cool enough for a repeat: The exact time of touchdown on Mars will be 1:31 a.m. [...]
