NASA Spinoffs for Public Safety
NASA has a long history of finding applications of space and aeronautical technologies that provide broad public benefits. The basis for the Agency’s direction to do this can be directly traced to the National Aeronautics and Space Act that created NASA in 1958. Since that initial call to action, NASA’s emphasis on safety has translated …
Word Search • Skylab Issue
Do your best to find these words scattered throughout this issue of RocketSTEM magazine.
Evolution of the space toilet
When Alan Shepard first went into space, he wet his pants. There was no toilet and that was his only option. Scientists put their heads together and created the modern diaper. Before this event, people used cloth diapers. The crews of the Apollo missions were a bit luckier, with diapers, but it still wasn’t very …
Antares blast off set for mid April
NASA announced that the maiden flight of the private Antares rocket from Orbital Sciences Corp. is slated to soar to space between April 17 to 19 from the newly constructed seaside launch pad dubbed 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The two stage Antares rocket serves as the …
NASA’s NuSTAR helps solve riddle of black hole spin
Two X-ray space observatories, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass two million times that of our Sun. The supermassive black hole lies at the dust- and gas-filled heart of …
A window into Europa’s ocean may be right at the surface
If you could lick the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have detailed the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath …
Planck mission brings universe into sharp focus
The European Space Agency’s Planck space mission has released the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe, revealing new information about its age, contents and origins. The map results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought, and is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years …
Kepler discovers smallest planet yet
NASA’s Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring …
Endeavour to discover at the California Science Center
The California Science Center in Los Angeles is on a mission to inspire kids while also pursuing grand display plans for Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Hubble images a ‘Rose of Galaxies’
In celebration of the anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 1990 deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is tidally distorted …
Never ending journey: Voyager spacecraft still making discovery near boundary of solar system
For more than thirty years, a pair of twin NASA spacecraft have been on an epic journey through the solar system. A journey that is arguably one of the greatest adventures in the history of mankind. They have travelled farther than any man-made objects ever have, and will soon leave our cosmic neighborhood and become …
Space News Briefs – January 2013
NPP satellite reveals new composite image of Earth at night Scientists have unveiled an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and NOAA satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before. …
Salute to the Pioneers of Space
The last man to walk on the Moon decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this occasion at the place where his flight career started. Held Dec. 15 at the National Naval Aviation Museum, with 1,200 of his friends, the event was split up into several different panel discussions. The morning panel included individuals such …
Gene Cernan: A conversation with the last men on the Moon
Forty years have passed since he left mankind’s last bootprint on the Moon, but Gene Cernan is a man focused on the future. He strongly believes that inspiring dreams within children, and encouraging STEM education is the path to a future where we walk on the Moon again. Cernan: “What we have to do is …
Harrison Schmitt: A conversation with the last men on the Moon
Of the 12 men who explored the Moon, only Dr. Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt was a professional geologist. After years spent training those who had gone before him, he blazed a trail for the scientist-astronauts who would later follow him into space. Schmitt: “Well I think it was important to the space program because it set …
Apollo 17: Final voyage to the Moon
Forty years ago, humanity left its last footprints on the surface of another celestial body. Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt guided their lunar module Challenger down into a beautiful, mountain-ringed valley in the Taurus Mountains, on the edge of the Moon’s Serenitatis basin, just south of the ancient crater Littrow. The spectacular …
NASA Spinoffs from Apollo
With the success of the Apollo program, NASA delivered great progress in the fields of rocketry and aeronautics, as well as the fields of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Lesser known accomplishments are some of the many spinoffs that came from the Apollo program—partnerships created between NASA and industry to commercialize the technologies developed for …
Julian Leek has an eagle’s eye view of Space Coast
It may seem like nothing more than a tall tale, to hear that after arriving at the Space Coast in the last 1960s, a teenager from England soon would be riding atop the launch tower for a Saturn V as it rolled out to the launch pad. But in this case, it is the real …
Emily Nelson working to keep astronauts safe aboard the ISS
At all times, astronauts live aboard the International Space Station (ISS). They carry out their daily activities working in a zero gravity habitat orbiting Earth, while their lives are in the hands of a ground crew hundreds of miles below them back on the ground. These “professional problem solvers” monitor everything happening inside and outside …
NASA developing SLS rocket to take us beyond LEO again
What is the Space Launch System? It’s NASA’s plan for a next generation space exploration vehicle, and it is built like a big puzzle by putting together the best of both the Saturn V that took men to the Moon and the Space Shuttle that for 30 years took us to low Earth orbit. Here’s …