No nation had successfully sent a human into space until 12 April 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit aboard Vostok 1. Gagarin’s flight triggered the Space Race between Russia and America and marked humanity’s venture into outer space. Prior to World War II, Germany experimented with various military space programs involving human…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully touched our star for the first time ever! Flying through its upper atmosphere – known as corona – and sampling particles and magnetic fields there. Named in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker, this mission seeks to explore and comprehend the Sun’s mysterious corona and solar wind that circulate our closest…
Astrobiologists have long dreamed of finding another planet similar to our Earth in order to explore whether life could exist elsewhere, and new research shows that such planets may be far more widespread than once believed. Thanks to advanced planet-hunting techniques, astronomers have discovered thousands of planet candidates outside our Solar System – many Earth-sized…
An exciting new website provides diehard space fans with an incredible way to relive the moon landing as it happened. A wealth of audio recordings has long been accessible online; air-to-ground communications between controllers have also been preserved. But thousands of hours of supplementary conversations between controllers have remained unseen for decades – until now….
On 14 July 2015, New Horizons made an epic journey through Pluto’s system and returned spectacular images showing an icy world with towering water-ice mountains and vast plains of frozen nitrogen. From concept to launch day – and multiple nearly cancelled attempts along the way – took a difficult 17 years. How does it work?…
Apollo 11 immediately captured world imagination upon launch, drawing global interest as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin embarked upon mankind’s first steps ever on the Moon. It made history. They disassociated Eagle from Columbia, and began exploring the Moon’s surface. Furthermore, they deployed scientific equipment and collected samples of lunar materials. Launch Apollo 11 was…
Stern and his team struggled for years to launch their mission, facing an intense race against time: only four years were available for designing, launching and reaching Jupiter for gravity assistance. New Horizons would likely make its first encounter with Pluto and Charon during its trek through the Kuiper Belt – an outer region of…
As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 rocketed away, an eager crowd watched it lift off at Cape Kennedy. Following four hours of restful flight time, their astronauts started their first lunar excursion mission. Science experiments that measured the composition of solar wind were employed, as well as a laser reflector to identify our…
Since World War II, spacecraft have launched satellites into orbit, landed astronauts on the moon, and probed our solar system – many owing their existence to partnerships formed during the conflict. Wernher von Braun and his team formed one such collaboration, creating the rocket which propelled Yuri Gagarin into space aboard Vostok 1. His journey…
