drew@drewexmachina.com
At the same time American agencies like NACA and the USAF were studying manned spaceflight through the 1950s (see “The Origins of NASA’s Mercury Program”), comparable […]
One of the most crucial phases of many interplanetary missions is orbit insertion. Everything must go right the first time, or the spacecraft fails to enter […]
Archaeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of artifacts and other evidence of material culture. While normally one associates archaeology with […]
The mention of the “dark side of the Moon” as a synonym for the lunar “far side” on any online forum inevitably leads to a torrent […]
As the Voyager spacecraft continue their missions onwards into interstellar space, it seems hard to believe that it has already been 30 years since the encounter […]
Whenever the hot weather finally arrives in New England, some of my thoughts during idle moments turn towards memories of summer vacations from school when I […]
As the historic Apollo 11 mission was heading to the Moon, a bit of space drama was unfolding before the eyes of the world. Just three […]
On October 18, 1967 the sole 1V spacecraft to survive launch for the Soviet “V-67” mission to Venus, called Venera 4, finally reached its target. The […]
As the Cold War deepened in the 1950s, Americans developed an ever worsening case of paranoia about its primary adversary, the Soviet Union. These fears were […]
Now that we are at the end of 2018, I figured it was time to look back once again at this year’s material published on Drew […]
We have all had the experience of when we are looking for something, we sometimes do not find it. But as soon as we stop looking, […]
Mention NASA’s Viking mission to Mars in 1976 and its first-of-its-kind in situ search for life on another planet immediately comes to mind. While astrobiological experiments […]