drew@drewexmachina.com
In the years following the end of World War II, the possibility of space travel experienced a great surge of interest in Europe and America. This […]
Back when I was growing up in the heyday of the Apollo program, all young space enthusiasts like myself knew about NASA’s trio of unmanned lunar […]
Back when I was growing up during the first “Golden Age” of planetary exploration, one planetary exploration program stood out among the rest: NASA’s Mariner series […]
In recent years it seems that NASA regularly extends the missions of its long-lived planetary spacecraft sometimes far beyond their original primary missions. The armada of […]
With a V magnitude of -1.46, Sirius is by far the brightest star in our nighttime sky. Located in the constellation of Canis Major (the Greater […]
While interest in miniaturized satellites for a range of applications has been growing in recent years, as a class these satellites are hardly new. By necessity, […]
The history of planetary exploration is filled with proposals that never flew. While there are some that, at best, had dubious chances at success, there are […]
With the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) routinely spending six or more months in orbit, it is sometimes forgotten that only a few decades […]
Before the discovery of the first extrasolar planets, the only planetary system we could study was our own Solar System. Based on centuries of study, astronomers […]
The Holy Grail of NASA’s Kepler mission is the identification of what have become popularly known as “Earth twins”: Earth-size planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like […]
At this time there are several new heavy-lift launch vehicles being developed in the United States such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the recently announced Vulcan being […]
A half century ago, NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft had completed the first successful flyby of Mars on July 15, 1965 (Universal Time) and had already finished […]
