Like many a scientist before me, I have spent this week trying to grow a crystal. I wasn’t fussy, it didn’t have to be a single crystal – a smush of something would have done – just as long as it had a…
It was an exciting year in space exploration, with mind-blowing triumphs and heart-breaking failures. On Earth, new rockets and spacecraft were tested by space agencies and commercial ventures. SpaceX…
While the Mars Rovers and the Rosetta spacecraft will continue to make headlines in 2015, the stage is set for the solar system’s next great mission – the Pluto-bound New Horizons. Discovered in 1930…
NASA has revealed that a whiff of methane has been detected twice in the last couple of years at the Martian surface by the Curiosity Rover. The source of the methane is uncertain. It is not even clear…
After a 24-hour delay due to bad weather, the first test launch of the Orion spacecraft by NASA is underway with the ultimate goal of putting human beings on Mars. Weeks after the landing on a comet by…
To date, all human economic activity has depended on the material and energy resources of a single planet; understandably, perhaps. It is conceivable though that future advances in space exploration could…
“All systems go!” I said cautiously with a long sigh of relief. I had approved plans for the first soil analysis that would give humankind clues to the past and future habitability of Mars. One small word…
When in 1873 Jules Verne published his novel of planet-trotting high adventure, the world was on the verge of an explosion in global travel. New trans-continental railways and the Suez canal promised an…
It is three years since the final flight of the US space shuttle programme, during which time NASA has had to rely on the Russians, its allies, in space at least, to ferry astronauts and supplies between…
After a four-year competition, NASA has announced it has selected Boeing and SpaceX to take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The contract - worth US$6.8 billion - was announced as part…
A titanic eruption in our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, has sent shockwaves through the astronomical community here on Earth. NASA’s Swift satellite detected a flood of gamma rays at 21:15 UTC yesterday…
Guilhem Penent, Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’Ecole Militaire (IRSEM)
Citing Russia’s “ongoing violations of Ukraine’s sovereign and territorial integrity,” NASA announced April 3 that it has cut all ties with the Russian Federation with the exception of the International…
Who can forget the hit movie The Dish and Australia’s role in beaming the first live television pictures of man’s first landing on the moon? Well, the filmmakers did play with the truth a bit but it did…
Astronomers didn’t know, 20 years ago, whether planets existed around any stars other than the Sun. All that changed in 1995 with the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. And by the beginning…
Mercury has long been a mystery to scientists. Until recently, knowledge of the planet was limited to the grey, patchy landscape revealed by the Mariner 10 probe, NASA’s first mission to Mercury in the…
A famous picture in the English edition of Newton’s “Principia” shows cannon balls being fired from the top of a mountain. If they go fast enough, their trajectory curves downward no more steeply than…
Now that the US government is back in business, all “non-essential” services will resume. For 15 days we went without NASA’s full operation, US Antarctic research and federally-funded clinical studies…
A previously unknown canyon has been discovered in Greenland, hidden beneath the ice. It is at least 750 kilometres long. To put that in perspective, imagine a ten kilometre wide gorge, up to 800 metres…