This is a reprint of a post from 2013, updated for the date and now including a map of the lunar farside. Today marks the 48th anniversary of one of the worst tragedies to befall NASA and human spaceflight: the fire that broke out in the Apollo 204 (later renamed Apollo 1) command module during a…
Category: Spaceflight
The First Christmas From the Moon
“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” – Bill Anders, Apollo 8 On Christmas Eve 46 years ago, December 24, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts entered orbit around the Moon and came upon an amazing sight: a blue Earth “rising*” beyond the…
Watch This Hauntingly Beautiful Footage From Orion’s Fiery Return to Earth
On December 5, 2014, at 7:05 a.m. EST, an enormous Delta IV Heavy roared into the sky from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sending a test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft on a “flawless” four-and-a-half hour, two-orbit voyage which took it 3,604 miles away from Earth – farther than any spacecraft…
NASA Makes Orion’s First Launch a Social Event
“It’s gonna be a BFD,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week during a live broadcast on NASA TV, regarding the then-imminent launch of the Orion spacecraft. And it certainly was a “BFD” – to NASA and its partners, to the nation, and especially to the 150 participants of the EFT-1 NASA Social who were seated…
Orion to Soar Into Space This Week for a NASA Social
This Thursday, at 7:05 a.m. EST, the launch window for NASA’s Orion will open and – weather permitting – it will lift off aboard an enormous ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral for its maiden voyage into space. The event will be broadcast live on NASA TV starting at 4:30 a.m., and I’ll also be…
NASA’s Turning Up the Heat: Orion’s Upcoming Trial by Fire
On the morning of December 4 2014, at 7:05 a.m. EST, a ULA Delta IV Heavy will thunder into the sky from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Pad 37, its orange-and-white triple-barreled, Boy Scout salute-shaped rocket carrying NASA’s next-generation Orion space vehicle 3,600 miles into space where it will perform a multi-stage orbital test before…
Spaceflight is Still Hard: Antares Explosion Destroys Station Supplies
This past Tuesday, October 28, at 6:22 p.m. EDT, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket lifted off from the shorefront pad at NASA’s Wallops Space Flight Facility in Virginia, the Cygnus vehicle inside its fairing . The third of eight planned launches in Orbital Sciences’ $1.9-billion NASA contract, the Orb-3 mission was to deliver over 5,000 lbs…
No, The Moon Landings Weren’t Faked.
Yes, we really landed 12 men on the Moon from 1969-1972. Get over it.
Now You Can Watch Beautiful Live Video of Earth From Space
This is something really special, and everyone should know about it, and so I’m doing my part and sharing it here but please feel free to pass it along yourself as well. We now have publicly-accessible, high-definition video of our planet coming in live from the Space Station, thanks to the High Definition Earth Viewing…
Voyager’s Long-Distance Valentine
This is from a post I originally published in 2010. I’ll keep trotting it out until it’s not cool anymore. (Which I don’t think will ever happen.) On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of traveling the solar system, the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around to…
Experience Earthrise with Apollo 8
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit making astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell the first humans in history to travel around the Moon and see first-hand its hidden far side. During their 10-orbit voyage they captured one of the most well-known and iconic images of the Space Age: the blue-and-white…
Happy Birthday, ISS!
It’s been 15 years since the first piece of what we now know as the International Space Station left the surface of our planet. It was Russia’s Zarya module, launched aboard a Proton rocket on Nov. 20, 1998, and the U.S. followed suit two weeks later with the Unity module sent aboard the shuttle Endeavour….
Lights in the Dark 