MarsWord Games

NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission Crossword

Human SpaceflightISSSpaceX

Dragon Endeavour delivers astronauts to ISS after historic flight

Human SpaceflightRocket LaunchSpaceX

SpaceX launches astronauts into orbit on historic flight

CometIce and StoneWeek 23

Comet of the Week: SOHO C/1998 K10 and C/1998 K11 

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 23

Special Topic: The K-T Event

QuizMeSpaceX

QuizMe: SpaceX

CometIce and StoneWeek 22

Comet of the Week: “Caesar’s Comet” C/42 K1

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 22

Special Topic: Large Ground Meteorites

Human SpaceflightWord Games

Space Shuttle Atlantis Word Search

CometIce and StoneWeek 20

Comet of the Week: IRAS-Araki-Alcock 1983d

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 20

Special Topic: Close Cometary Encounters

BusinessesHuman SpaceflightMoon

Trio of American companies to develop Artemis lunar landers

CometIce and StoneWeek 19

Comet of the Week: ATLAS C/2019 Y4

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 19

Special Topic: Occultations by Asteroids

AstronomyHubbleQuizMe

QuizMe: Hubble Space Telescope

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 18

Special Topic: Meteorites

CometIce and StoneWeek 17

Comet of the Week: Arend-Roland 1956h

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 17

Special Topic: Designations and Names of “Small Bodies”

ApolloHuman Spaceflight

‘Apollo 13: Home Safe’ documentary gives inside look at mission

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 16

Special Topic: Prediction of Future Approaches

AstronomyEarth

James Webb’s primary mirror passes test before pandemic suspends work

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 15

Special Topic: Upcoming Missions to “Small Bodies”

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 14

Special Topic: Ancient Ideas about Comets

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 12

Special Topic: Resources in “Small Bodies”

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 11

Special Topic: Comet 1P/Halley

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 10

Special Topic: Fred Whipple’s Comet Model

Human Spaceflight

SpaceX Crew Dragon closing in on first launch with astronauts aboard

ContestMars

Finalists selected for naming NASA’s next Mars rover

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 09

Special Topic: Great Comets

EarthJupiter

NASA prepares robot to traverse beneath oceans of Europa

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 08

Special Topic: Stellar Intruders

Rocket LaunchSun

Solar Orbiter on way to explore Sun’s polar regions

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 05

Special Topic: Exocomets

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 03

Special Topic: The Oort Cloud

Ice and StoneTopicWeek 02

Special Topic: Near-Earth asteroids

Most Recent Articles

MarsWord Games

NASA is upping its game with the next mission to the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission will include a car-size rover based largely on the design of the Curiosity rover. Also attaching a ride to Mars with the new rover is a small helicopter that will test powered flight on another world for the …

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Human SpaceflightISSSpaceX

A pair of veteran NASA astronauts flying aboard a commercial SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft safely docked at the International Space Station ISS) this Sunday morning just 19 hours after the first human launch from US soil for the first time in nine years on a history-making and flawless blastoff from the Florida Space Coast. NASA …

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Human SpaceflightRocket LaunchSpaceX

NASA astronauts launched from American soil for the first time in nine years and accomplished the history-making event aboard a commercial SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft soaring from the Florida space coast and bound for the International Space Station (ISS) – to the cheers of tens of thousands of spectators gathered from around America and three …

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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

If you like numbers, you will love March 14, 2015. When written as a numerical date, it’s 3/14/15, corresponding to the first five digits of pi (3.1415) — a once-in-a-century coincidence! Pi Day, which would have been the 136th birthday of Albert Einstein, is a great excuse to eat pie, and to appreciate how important …

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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

AstronomyEarth

The team building NASA’s mammoth James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently accomplished a major milestone – fully deploying its 21 foot (6.5 meter) primary mirror into the same configuration it will have when it is carrying out astronomical observations in space. However, NASA has also suspended virtually all future testing of the Webb Telescope – …

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EarthJupiter

NASA is planning a mission to look for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa and has created a rover that will be able to navigate its icy surface from above and below. That’s how BRUIE — the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration — was born. A nimble and buoyant robot, BRUIE can traverse sheets of ice …

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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 …

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Apollo 50th Celebration

Lunar Exploration

BusinessesHuman SpaceflightMoon

Marking a significant step forward in landing Americans on the Moon by 2024, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the selection of three U.S. companies – Blue Origin, SpaceX and Dynetics – to design and develop the critical human landing systems (HLS) under the agency’s Artemis lunar landing program. Blue Origin won by far the largest …

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ApolloMoonQuizMe

Project Apollo encompassed more than 400,000 Americans working together to make it possible for 24 NASA astronauts to journey to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. This mammoth engineering feat is the featured topic in this edition of our QuizMe series of educational content. In honor of Apollo 11’s historic mission, we’ve added an extra …

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AstronautsMoonQuizMe

Neil Armstrong will forever be known as the first human to walk upon the Moon. He also is the featured topic in this edition of our new QuizMe series of educational content. Put your knowledge to the test with these 10 questions about the quiet and private astronaut that was thrust upon the world stage …

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Mars

MarsWord Games

NASA is upping its game with the next mission to the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission will include a car-size rover based largely on the design of the Curiosity rover. Also attaching a ride to Mars with the new rover is a small helicopter that will test powered flight on another world for the …

Read More
ContestMars

After conducting a nationwide contest where kindergarten through 12th grade students across the United States submitted essays to “Name the Rover,” NASA has selected nine candidate names as finalists to come up with a fitting name for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The nine candidate names were selected from more than 28,000 essays submitted since the …

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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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Hubble Space Telescope

Around the Solar System

QuizMeSolar System

The solar system that everyone of us calls home is the fourth featured topic in our new QuizMe series of educational content. Put your knowledge to the test with these 10 questions about our tiny outpost within the galactic neighborhood. Afterward, please feel free to share your results and challenge your friends to take the …

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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

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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