In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron penned a spoken word song called ‘Whitey on the Moon’ that criticized the 1969 Moon landing. A hip-hop scholar explains why the song still reverberates today.
Eugene Cernan on the Moon, December 13, 1972, during the Apollo 17 mission, the last manned flight to the Earth’s natural satellite.
NASA
Flying the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is the equivalent of flying one at about 100,000 feet on Earth. Tricky, considering the highest helicopter flight ever recorded maxed out at 42,000 feet.
India may land on the Moon this coming year, while Nasa will launch its new, powerful rocket farther into space than any other human rated spacecraft.
A photo taken from the International Space Station in 2014 shows the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft on the left and the unpiloted ISS Progress 57 cargo craft. Six years later, private players have joined the space race.
Picryl
Over the coming decade, the arrival of constellations of small satellites will reshape the space industry. It constitutes a paradigm shift, particularly in terms of data gathering and processing.
The only six sites on the farside of the Moon suitable for telescope arrays of around 200km across.
NASA
NASA scientist Katherine Johnson was instrumental in getting people to the moon. Here are some of the lessons one mathematics professor believes she taught us all.
SpaceX’s Dragon 2 will carry humans for the first time in 2020.
NASA/SpaceX
Apollo 11 tends to steal the spotlight when it comes to lunar landings. But Apollo 12 was the first mission to make a precise pinpoint landing on the Moon - and without the aid of computers or GPS.
India’s launch vehicle carrying Chandrayaan-2 lifted off from Sriharikota, India, in late July 2019.
Indian Space Research Organization via AP
Are India and China engaged in a new space race? India’s increasingly ambitious space ventures, including its Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission, are evidence of the country’s interest in space exploration.
The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is equipped with eight instruments to study the moon, including a lunar terrain mapping camera and a sensor to study the moon’s thin exosphere.
Indian Space Research Organisation/AAP
Despite a last-minute crash-landing, efforts behind India’s moon mission should be applauded. The endeavor has set an example for emerging space programs across the globe.