Our space correspondent meets the controllers of the International Space Station as they steer away from deadly space junk and keep astronauts alive. It could be the most boring reality TV show in the world, if the stakes were not so high. On a huge screen at one end of [...]
Weather remained the main hurdle Sunday for an on-time launch of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission, an orbiter designed to answer the question “where did the water go” on the Red Planet. A two-hour launch widow opens at 1:28 p.m. EST Monday, raising hope that expected cloud [...]
Virgin Galactic Once a week at dawn, C.J. Sturckow guns a blue Extra 330SC stunt plane into the pink sky above the Mojave Desert. At 14,000 feet, the 5-foot-9 former NASA astronaut starts doing his "card" – a checklist of rolls and spins meant to simulate spaceflight's G-forces. White-knuckling the [...]
Humans are not built for space. That fact becomes most obvious when astronauts return to Earth with atrophied muscles, weakened bones, cardiovascular problems, and some immune deficiencies. And it seems we also age faster in space, too. A study published earlier this month in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology [...]
