By Peadar Coyle It is said that education is something people have strong opinions about. A growing literature has emerged around randomized evaluations of interventions, most notably Esther Duflo’s work on […]
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While space exploration seems like a job only for companies with enormous resources, NASA is increasingly turning to small businesses for innovative ideas in exchange for research contracts.
The shuttle program having been terminated and a budget crunch looming, the national space program lacks a clear purpose. One astronomer says NASA should focus on saving the planet.
With Santorum, Romney and Paul taking the most votes in the Iowa Caucus, where do they stand on space exploration and the future of NASA? Will other candidates make space an issue?
Mars’ Gale crater was chosen from over thirty potential landing sites for when Curiosity, NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover ever, touches down in 2012. What makes it so special?
This February, the International Space Station will receive its first privately-built visitor, an unmanned Dragon capsule built by SpaceX, which eventually will carry astronauts aboard.
The largest solar storm in seven years is expected to peak tomorrow, threatening GPS signals and the electrical grid. The cloud of particles streaming from the sun is headed for […]
Instead of landing a craft on a comet, scientists want to study space rocks by firing a harpoon at them. The harpoon’s tip will collect rock samples and return them to Earth for study.
Scientists have discovered the smallest exoplanets yet known, and both represent the closest we have come to finding Earth’s twin. Using NASA’s Kepler telescope, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for […]
BRAVO to the Russian scientists who breached Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica, which is over 2 miles below the surface. This is quite a feat of engineering […]
An idea which devastated many of my previous assumptions has implications for important views many of us hold. It also indicates the underlying basis of this blog itself. Investigating what […]
Future missions to space should concentrate on eliminating threats to Earth, expanding civilization beyond our planet and harvesting extraterrestrial energy resources.
If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute. So goes the saying that is loosely attributed to Mark Twain. The same cannot be said of the […]
SETI, or the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, could be used to look for evidence of alien technology on the surface of the moon. Sure, it’s a long shot. But what if we found something?
In the last four months, three large spacecraft have fallen to Earth, including a Russian probe loaded with toxic fuel. As low-Earth atmosphere gets more crowded, who is looking out for us?
NASA has found a planet outside our solar system which could sustain life. But does it? As research continues, a deluge of new exoplanets may be discovered thanks to miniature satellites.
Given the rate at which the Kepler spacecraft is discovering planets outside our solar system, it seems only a matter of time until a foreign rock is found to be capable of sustaining life.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is again combing space for radio signals broadcast by other intelligent life. To overcome its budget problems, it will share telescopes with the Air Force.
By 2017, buying a ticket to space will be like ‘scheduling a flight to L.A.’, say members of the airline industry. Flights to space are scheduled to take off this year from a spaceport in New Mexico.
What’s the Big Idea? Does Kepler-22b really exist? Is there life on this planet? Could we inhabit it? How would we get there? These are a few of the many […]
Thanks to the serendipitous placing of NASA space satellites, scientists have confirmed that the tsunami which struck Japan in March was doubly powerful because of a rare phenomenon.
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that in comparison to young Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, today’s high school seniors and college freshmen are […]
What’s the Big Idea? Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is taking some heat from fellow Republicans due to his proposal to start “a permanent colony on the moon” that would allow […]
Get ready for a brave new world where supercomputing mobile devices are so ubiquitous that they lead to entirely new business models in industries ranging from healthcare to education. Cisco […]
Microsoft co-creator Paul Allen wants to make an airplane that can launch satellites and perhaps manned crews. Is the engineering feasible or is this the next Spruce Goose?
My August 20th blog entry, “MARS Updates Including The Curiosity Rover, The Flow of Liquid Water and Possible Manned Missions” mentioned that NASA was preparing to launch its latest Mars […]
What is the Big Idea? It’s late May and the year is 1989. Among the chaos in Tiananmen Square is 20-year-old David Tian, who is one of millions bravely chanting […]
Just in time for the holidays, the Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an amazing view of a cosmic event that is being called the “Holiday Snow Angel.” The image captures […]
NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space observatory has already identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates and tomorrow NASA will announce a new discovery by it.
Mitt Romney has run an Obama style campaign with a NASA space launch level of attention to detail. By comparison, most of Romney’s opponents, who insist that they are the […]