Mars

Apollo astronauts hopped across the moon because of their stiff suits, not because of low lunar gravity

The skies of Mars just got a little more crowded. On September 21st, 2014 NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) fired its engines for some 33 minutes in order to swing into a safe orbit.

The India Space Research Organization unveils its first pictures of the red planet

The Mangalyaan probe, the country's first mission to another world, has entered the Red Planet's orbit

A couple of years ago, one of my thesis mentors sought visually impaired scientists working at a major space science agency in the United States.

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter arrived at Mars to study how gas escapes from around the planet
 

Last summer, I attended a new media professionals workshop at the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Colorado to learn more about the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission which launched last November.

This post is one in a series covering, and expanding on, topics in the book The Copernicus Complex (Scientific American/FSG).           The conversation usually goes like this: Do you think we’re alone in the universe?

The InSight Mission will measure the planet's rotation, weather at the landing site and magnetic disturbances to reveal more about Mars' inner workings and early development

In a month’s time, the end result of two-and-a-half years of research, thinking, writing, re-writing, re-re-writing, editing, mulling, puzzling, coffee-drinking, beer-swilling, swearing, and tweaking will hit the shelves in the form of my new book The Copernicus Complex.

NASA says the rover will carry a zoomable camera, an oxygen-maker and instruments geared to the selection of samples that might be studied one day back on Earth

It's summer in the northern hemisphere of a small, damp, planet orbiting a middle-aged star in a spiral galaxy of matter enjoying a brief heyday before colliding with another galaxy in some 4 billion orbits of the same small, damp, planet.