If you can’t get enough of the Apollo missions after my last post watch as the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is booted up. See inside the machine at the ropes used to store information and marvel at all the little wires that made the landing on the Moon possible. For […]
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Stephen Hawking on Star Trek
Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton played poker with Data on Star Trek TNG. This BBC documentary on the life of Professor Stephen Hawking is well worth a listen. RIP.
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Cassini: The Grand Finale
“1:55 a.m. PDT Cassini engineers have received the signal that Cassini has started a five-minute roll to point the instrument that will sample Saturn’s atmosphere (INMS) into the optimal direction, facing the direction of the oncoming gases. Along with this roll, the spacecraft is reconfiguring its systems for real-time data […]
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Historic Landing of Falcon 9
The first stage of the Falcon 9 landed exactly where they wanted it last night after helping to deliver 11 satellites to low Earth orbit. A huge achievement. Now, gotta try this in Kerbal Space Program…
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Good vibrations: looking for geopathic stress
I’ve become a rather sceptical person of late. Any mention of cancer cures, or advice from someone who thinks they can cure the common cold will unfortunately cause me to raise my eyes to heaven. A Guardian article on geopathic stress reminded me that this form of quackery was one […]
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How New Horizons flew to Pluto
The last week has been quite an amazing one in human history. We have photographed up close all the planets (and ex-planets) of our solar system. What our ancestors saw as mere points of light in the sky are now full colour images that anyone can see. It’s really amazing. […]
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How did Apollo get to the Moon?
It’s extraordinary that people haven’t been back to the Moon in my lifetime. I can only imagine the excitement of the first Moon landing, although from what I’ve read the later missions the general public wasn’t that interested in it. Still, the Apollo missions were an amazing feat of engineering, […]
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How to fly to the space station
Have you ever been curious about how people fly to the ISS? If you’ve played Kerbal Space Program you probably have a pretty good idea but for everyone else this video dots a great job of explaining orbital mechanics!
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The Orion Launch
The Orion test vehicle launched this morning without a hitch on top of a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. If you’re wondering what the test is about, or what all the fuss is about, watch this video by Scott Manley as he recreates the test in […]
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NASA + Google = SPHERES
This is quite amazing. Google and NASA are working on robots that will float around the International Space Station helping astronauts or perform maintenance activities independently on station. I love the zero G test of the SPHERE in the video. It looked like a lot of fun! I found this […]