This article was cowritten by Dr. Pamela and Erik. Photo Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani This week we’re doing something we’ve never done before; we’re dedicating the majority of the show to a single story: SpaceX’s recurring failure to follow the rules, regulations, and norms of international spaceflight. We have the receipts, and we hope that you will hear us out before you hit that @ button. I and aerospace correspondent Erik Madaus are taking on this topic knowing it will bring us a certain amount of internet hate because we recognize that accidents in spaceflight happen when engineers and...
VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day
A computer generated concept image of the VIPER rover Despite what the contents of this and recent episodes might imply, my passion is for science not for spacecraft. The thing is, sometimes spacecraft are needed to do the science. And lately, I and many others have...
The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet
As a nerdy member of GenX, I can state with pride and shame that I watched Buck Rogers in the early 80s and was constantly fascinated by all the weird ways their writers found for fictional 24th century scientists to misunderstand the relics from the 20th century....
Hubble Down to One Gyro
In a June 4 telecon with the press, NASA shared that due to recent issues, they have made the decision to operate HST in single gyro mode. This isn’t expected to have any impact on the quality of individual science images, however Hubble will need significantly more...
Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts
I have a delightfully weird tech story related to future lunar exploration. Research has shown that astronauts working on the moon are most likely to fall over when using tools, and once they fall over, getting up while wearing a space suit that restricts their motion...
Talking to Whales
Credit: Jodi Frediani; NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Research Permit 19703 The kinds of life many of us hope to find within our solar system likely won’t be all that intellectual. Those possible microbes on Mars might be able to respond to food or pain, but that’s...
New Simulation Provides More Accurate Model of Everything
Credit: Josh Borrow, the FLAMINGO team and the Virgo Consortium To succeed in astronomy, you really need to either be really really good with technology, or really really good at math. I personally am a technology person, and I’ll happily operate telescopes and write...