People, Businesses, Places & Events
‘Smoke and fire’ rise over Utah Salt Flats as student rockets soar
The 2013-14 NASA Student Launch rocketry challenge has come to an end – and brought something new to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Tooele County, Utah, where car and motorcycle enthusiasts regularly watch cutting-edge vehicles put to the test, speeding across the vast, flat expanse. On May 17, all eyes there turned upward as 16 …
Bigelow’s promise: More space at less cost with inflatable space habitats
We’ve all seen or played in one of those inflatable bounce houses at a carnival or a friend’s birthday party. Now just imagine a bounce house that you can live inside of in outer space. While much more advanced than a bounce house, that’s what Bigelow Aerospace is pursuing. They are designing and building inflatable …
Kim Lichtenberg spends her days sampling Martian soil and rocks
RocketSTEM spoke with Dr. Kimberly Lichtenberg, a scientist and engineer who works on NASA’s Mars rover missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., in conjunction with our “Women in Aerospace” series. We spoke about her career at NASA, role models, education and how she became interested in space exploration. Indeed she’s been in …
David Hearn takes outreach to new level with Kissimmee Park Observatory
Public outreach is an oft used and abused term nowadays, but I find it the wrong label for astronomy. In Astronomy we are reaching out for the stars! What is really meant in this context is knowledge sharing and encouraging people to raise their eyes to the stars. I found it somewhat depressing that a …
Team Unicorn: Intergalactic force of awesome
By all accounts, Team Unicorn should not exist. Like the fabled unicorns of ancient mythology, geek girls are also supposed to be the stuff of myth and legend, whispered about in reverent tones at Comic Con, but only ever seen fleetingly out of the corner of one’s eye. And yet, these magical beasts are very …
Abandon in place: Betty Grissom’s last visit to Apollo 1 memorial?
Is Gus Grissom’s widow herself about to “abandon in place” the memorial vigil she has maintained over the last 48 years since the fiery death suffered by her husband, Astronaut Commander Virgil “Gus” Grissom and fellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Ed White back in 1967 at Pad 34 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS)? They …