After Apollo 13’s failure, congressional interest in NASA’s lunar program declined significantly and led to cancellation of Apollo 18 and 19. Even after these cancellations, several other planned missions remained. These included the H and J missions. While H missions would have involved short duration stays on the moon with only two LEVAs (moonwalks), J…
Not every task requiring spacecraft requires the brute power of a massive rocket motor; some tasks need far more subtle actions like changing satellite positioning or giving another craft a gentle push while docking with it. These low-force thrusters utilize electricity to ionize gases like xenon and krypton, propelling them at high velocity out of…
This week will see the Moon turn red during a lunar eclipse – known as a Blood Moon and unrelated to any strange prophecies or predictions. Today marks one of four total lunar eclipses within two years – an astronomical phenomenon known as a lunar tetrad – occurring over that period. May and October eclipses…
JPL launches spacecraft into orbit via launch vehicles like Soyuz or NASA’s shuttles; each one designed for specific tasks. They must generate enough thrust to counter the force of gravity pulling down on them, but to do that they require lots of fuel. How a Spacecraft is Launched Spacecraft may be efficient machines, but their…
We currently possess 8,400 publicly available photos of the Moon, hundreds of hours of video footage, and mountains of scientific data pertaining to its formation and structure – plus 382 kilograms of Moon rock! On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin from Apollo 11 became humanity’s first steps on another world. Six…
Even though Mars has lost much of its overall magnetic field, some areas still create unique atmospheric electrodynamic structures – magnetic loops and cusps which alter how ions leave its atmosphere. Sabine Stanley and her colleagues have developed an effective technique for artificially creating these structures. Their paper published in Science details how this can…
An extensive space program requires considerable finances. Solar panels, dialysis treatment systems and security systems were all created due to or inspired by Apollo missions. This manuscript provides a high-fidelity reconstruction of Project Apollo costs, including annual cost data and program-by-program cost breakdowns. Furthermore, inflation adjustments based on two NASA cost reporting indices have also…
