People along the east coast of the United States should get a great opportunity to see a rocket launch from their own backyards this week. Weather permitting, observers from Massachusetts to the Carolinas could see an International Space Station-bound Cygnus spacecraft launch atop a two-stage Antares rocket Thursday (Dec. 19) [...]
For decades, the space race was seen as being mostly about national pride. Getting there first mattered most, whereas pushing the frontiers of science and technology took a close second. The first man in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, was proclaimed by the Kremlin as Citizen of the World and [...]
Billionaire Dennis Tito, tired of being told that we can’t send humans to Mars just yet, on Wednesday revealed his scheme for launching two astronauts to the red planet as early as December 2017. Dubbed “Inspiration Mars,” the flyby mission would exploit a rare alignment of Earth and Mars that [...]
The launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 ignited a race between the world’s two great rival powers. The United States and the former Soviet Union, USSR each poured vast amounts of resources into the research and development of technologies for the exploration of outer space. Sputnik and the impressive [...]
