Wednesday, January 29 2020
CometIce and StoneWeek 05

Comet of the Week: The Daylight Comet of 1910

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 05

Special Topic: Exocomets

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 04

Special Topic: Asteroid (433) Eros

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 03

Special Topic: The Oort Cloud

HistoryIce and StoneWeek 02

Asteroid discovered inside orbit of Venus

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 02

Special Topic: Near-Earth asteroids

AstronautsISS

Christina Koch Breaks Record for Longest Female Spaceflight

EducationIce and Stone

New weekly educational series focuses on comets and asteroids

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 01

Special Topic: Main belt asteroids

Education

Canada working with U.S. to inspire a future generation of astronauts

Businesses

Blue Origin goes step by step ferociously into space

Human SpaceflightISS

Koch and Meir complete historic first all-female spacewalk

Human Spaceflight

New spacesuits unveiled for future Artemis missions

Mars

NASA’s Martian helicopter enters final test phase for 2020 rover

Human SpaceflightISS

International Space Station’s 20 years of transformation

ApolloEarthHuman SpaceflightPlaces & Events

America’s gateway to space: LC-39A

Solar System

Mining the sky

Fun & Games

Kerbal Space Program: Bringing rocket science to games

ApolloHuman SpaceflightInterviewMoon

Al Worden on the honor of being an astronaut

ApolloBusinessesHuman SpaceflightPeople

The difference it made: Building a car for the Moon

Rocket Launch

When good rockets go bad

AstronomyHubble

Hubble’s Top 100 images

Human Spaceflight

Land, sea and space: Naval aviators have led the way

Fun & GamesMuseums & Science Centers

National Flight Academy makes learning an adventure

Human SpaceflightInterviewISS

Tim Peake ready to become United Kingdom’s official ISS resident

InterviewPeopleSolar System

Charley Kohlhase has been our ambassador to the planets

ApolloEarthPlaces & EventsSolar System

Deep Space Network: Finding the signal for 50 years

Astronomy GuideSolar System

How to photograph the planets

ApolloInterviewMarsMoon

Buzz Aldrin: It’s time to colonize the Red Planet

ApolloHuman SpaceflightMuseums & Science Centers

Learning celestial navigation at Morehead Planetarium

Earth

Project Morpheus: Flying a test bed for future landers

EarthMarsPeople

HI-SEAS 2: Living on a simulated Mars

Interview

Brian Greene and the challenges of physics

EducationPlaces & Events

Zooniverse enables anyone to participate in science

Astronomy Guide

Starting in astrophotography

Most Recent Articles

HistoryIce and StoneWeek 05

JANUARY 26, 1978: The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) spacecraft is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Throughout its 18 years of operations IUE conducted observations of many astronomical objects, including several comets.  JANUARY 27, 2016: A team of astronomers led by Tabitha Boyajian of Yale University publishes their paper on the star KIC 8462852 – unofficially …

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CometIce and StoneWeek 05

The Daylight Comet of 1910’s Perihelion: 1910 January 17.59, q = 0.129 AU  In early 1910 the entire world – astronomers and lay public alike – awaited the imminent return of Comet 1P/Halley, which had been recovered the previous September and which was already detectable with moderate-sized telescopes. While Halley would go on to put on …

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Ice and StoneTopicWeek 05

It is now generally accepted that the planets in our solar system formed via the accumulation of smaller bodies dubbed “planetesimals” – which in turn formed from the accumulation of dust grains and (in the outer and thus colder regions) gas molecules – early in its history. Due to the early sun’s rotation the infalling …

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Ice and Stone 2020

Educational Resources

EducationIce and Stone

Ice and Stone 2020 is a new weekly series of educational material focusing on some of the small bodies of the solar system – comets and asteroids. The Earthrise Institute, a non-profit educational organization founded by Comet Hale-Bopp co-discoverer Alan Hale, is partnering with RocketSTEM and the La Cumbres Observatory to release the material for FREE online …

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Education

The United States and Canada are joining forces to encourage a new generation of astronauts. The two countries have cooperated on space exploration since soon after NASA, the U.S. space agency, was founded in 1958. Canada sends astronauts on NASA space missions, and it supplies technology for the International Space Station, among other space efforts. …

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Education

Objective Apply trigonometric ratios to the NASA Mars Helicopter Scout so that flight data such as climb angle and average speed can be calculated given initial flight parameters. Vocabulary • Slope: The angle the rille wall makes to the horizontal. • Above Ground Level (AGL): The altitude as measured from the local area. • Altitude: …

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Beginner's Astronomy Guide

Interviews

ApolloHuman SpaceflightInterviewMoon

“Do you know what they did down on the Moon? What those guys’ primary job was? They picked up rocks and dirt. Now, myself, in lunar orbit…” — Al Worden, Apollo 15 CMP USAF Colonel Alfred Worden served as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 15 – the fourth manned lunar landing mission. He also holds the …

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Human SpaceflightInterviewISS

On 20th November this year, a Union Jack Flag will be safely stored on board a Soyuz rocket, and, along with its owner, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and make its way to the International Space Station. This is not the first time that a British born citizen has flown in space, …

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InterviewPeopleSolar System

Charley Kohlhase officially ‘retired’ from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1998. At his retirement party, a recording was played of Carl Sagan, who had died two years previously. ‘…. His voice suddenly, pleasingly rang through the room. From the afterlife, Sagan implored, “Charley Kohlhase’s name should be as well known as Michael Jordan’s!”’ (from ‘Ambassadors …

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Shelf Space

ApolloShelf Space

Piers Bizony is an accomplished science journalist, space historian and documentary film maker. His books have explored the enormity and spectacle of the Universe as well as focused all way down to the sheer emptiness of a single atom. In his 2017 book Moonshots, Bizony takes readers on a photographic journey of 50 years of …

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ApolloShelf Space

All across America and throughout the world, celebrations are being held this month to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s first landing on the Moon. Well-traveled author Jerome Pohlen was just a kid when the Saturn V rockets were launching astronauts to the Moon from 1968 until 1972, but that era still has left …

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ApolloShelf Space

With the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon rapidly approaching, there has been a plethora of books about the Apollo program released during the past year. We’ve been deluged with such books here at RocketSTEM in the past couple of months. That has been a good thing too. The ever-rising stack …

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Earth and the ISS

AstronomyEarthPeopleSolar System

When NASA scientists assembled telescopes in her home country of Senegal, Binita Yanni knew very little about astronomy and didn’t realize a career in planetary sciences was even a possibility. Determined to learn why 21 U.S. telescopes were stationed throughout the Senegalese countryside, the 20-year-old chemical engineering student approached lead scientist Adriana Ocampo on the …

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Earth

From major hurricanes in the U.S. and Caribbean islands to floods in India, NASA and U.S. satellites have helped countries better forecast and respond to extreme weather events. Currently, U.S. satellites are tracking a typhoon in the East China Sea and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean using big-picture data from space. During the recent hurricanes Harvey and …

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ApolloEarthHuman SpaceflightPlaces & Events

The iconic launch pads, Pads 39A and 39B at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39, have been the starting point for many space flights including the first manned lunar landing. The original design for Launch Complex 39 called for three to five launch pads, designated 39A – 39E, that would have been spaced approximately 1.6 …

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Apollo 50th Celebration

Lunar Exploration

Moon

Indian scientists have pinpointed the location of their ambitious Vikram lunar lander on the Moon’s surface this weekend via imaging from their Chandrayaan-2 orbiting mothership. The lander was feared lost last Friday when contact was lost in the final moments of descent. The mission is India’s first attempt to soft land a robotic probe on …

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Moon

After a gallant effort worthy of the celestial goal the small privately built Israeli moon lander Beresheet fortified with high hopes failed in the final minutes of its autonomous descent to Earth’s nearest neighbor and crash landed onto the lunar surface Thursday afternoon, April 10. The Beresheet team, led by main investor Morris Kahn, soon …

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EarthMoon

This animation features actual satellite images of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the Sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) and telescope, and the Earth – one million miles away. Credit: NASA Moon seen crossing the face of the Earth A NASA camera aboard the Deep …

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Mars

Mars

Going where no helicopter has gone before, humanity’s maiden Martian chopper has entered its final testing phase with the goal of proving the rather difficult feat that a heavier-than-air vehicle can fly in the Red Planet’s extremely thin atmosphere. If all goes well, the Martian helicopter will be mated to the belly of NASA’s 2020 …

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Mars

The longest surviving robot ever to explore the surface of Mars – the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover – was declared dead by NASA officials on February 13, 2019, after conducting a record-setting 15 year mission on the Red Planet, when she failed to respond to a final set of “phone home” commands sent last night …

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Human SpaceflightMarsSolar System

It has long been known that SpaceX’s long term goal is the colonization of Mars. Everyone from the engineers to their CEO, Elon Musk, dreams of a world away from home. In September of 2016, we got a glimpse of how SpaceX is going to get there. At last, the long rumored Interplanetary Transport System …

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Hubble Space Telescope

Around the Solar System

HubbleSolar System

Thanks to the advanced imaging capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in cooperation with other observatories, astronomers were able to identify and explain a rare and beautiful object in the distant sky: an active asteroid that is in the process of coming apart. The image of the asteroid known as 6478 Gault shows two narrow, comet-like tails …

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AstronomyEarthPeopleSolar System

When NASA scientists assembled telescopes in her home country of Senegal, Binita Yanni knew very little about astronomy and didn’t realize a career in planetary sciences was even a possibility. Determined to learn why 21 U.S. telescopes were stationed throughout the Senegalese countryside, the 20-year-old chemical engineering student approached lead scientist Adriana Ocampo on the …

Read More
Human SpaceflightMarsSolar System

It has long been known that SpaceX’s long term goal is the colonization of Mars. Everyone from the engineers to their CEO, Elon Musk, dreams of a world away from home. In September of 2016, we got a glimpse of how SpaceX is going to get there. At last, the long rumored Interplanetary Transport System …

Read More

Gazing at the Universe

Universe

Until now, everything we’ve known about black holes — celestial objects with intense gravitation — has been from theories and illustrations. Now, thanks to an international collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a cosmic portrait of a supermassive black hole exists. At the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) in the Virgo constellation, the …

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Universe

For a planet, this would be like a day at the spa. After years of growing old, a massive planet could, in theory, brighten up with a radiant, youthful glow. Rejuvenated planets, as they are nicknamed, are only hypothetical. But new research from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has identified one such candidate, seemingly looking billions …

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HubbleUniverse

Whilst looking closely at a massive elliptical galaxy and its associated galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 — whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us — astronomers have spotted a strange and rare sight. The huge mass of the galaxy and the cluster is bending the light from a much more distant supernova behind …

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