Land, sea and space: Naval aviators have led the way
The United States Navy and NASA have had a working relationship for over 55 years now and they continue to complement each other in many different aspects of space exploration. This relation was forged way back in the late 1950s when NASA first began to look for pilots to become Astronauts that would eventually fly …
The One-Year Mission
If all goes as planned, on March 27th, a Soyuz rocket carrying the expedition 42 crew consisting of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch on a six-hour flight to dock with the International Space Station. The launch will begin a one-year mission for Kelly and Kornienko …
SSEP: Sending student experiments to the ISS
On the morning of July 12, 2014, the Orbital Science Antares rocket sits on Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Island facility awaiting to be hopefully be launched at 12:52 p.m. that afternoon. On top of the rocket is Orbital’s Cygnus ORB-2 spacecraft packed with cargo bound for the International Space Station. The spacecraft has been …
Project Morpheus: Flying a test bed for future landers
It’s May 22, 2014, another bright sunny day at Kennedy Space Center in Florida where a shiny four legged vehicle, dubbed Morpheus, stands in a special area at the north end of the Shuttle Landing facility awaiting the scheduled time to fly. This is the same facility where 78 of the 135 Space Shuttle missions …
Cassini at Saturn: A decade exploring the ringed system
Cassini: Amazing images and even more amazing science The Cassini orbiter has been in orbit around Saturn since June 2004. Launched aboard a Titan IVB rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on October 15, 1997, it was originally dubbed Cassini-Huygens as the Huygens probe was carried along with Cassini to the Saturnian system. The …
Bigelow’s promise: More space at less cost with inflatable space habitats
We’ve all seen or played in one of those inflatable bounce houses at a carnival or a friend’s birthday party. Now just imagine a bounce house that you can live inside of in outer space. While much more advanced than a bounce house, that’s what Bigelow Aerospace is pursuing. They are designing and building inflatable …