drew@drewexmachina.com
The 1976 Viking missions to Mars have been our only attempts to date to search directly for life on another planet. The pair of identical Viking […]
Entering orbit around another planet from an interplanetary approach trajectory is probably one of the most critical phases in a planetary mission. Everything must come together […]
Departing from my usual posts on space-related topics, I am announcing that Drew Ex Machina is now on Facebook as part of my effort to expand […]
In recent years there has been increasing interest in picosatellites (small satellites typically with a mass of 0.1 to 1 kilogram) which use the latest miniaturized […]
Today we almost take for granted one of the key technologies that makes spaceflight possible: the liquid propellant rocket engine. Exactly a century ago today, famed […]
It is often forgotten how much many of the new crewed space capsules currently under development in the US owe to the work done as part […]
Six years ago the discovery of the fifth planet known to orbit 55 Cancri A (abbreviated 55 Cnc A and also known as ρ1 Cancri A) […]
The Soviet planetary probe, Mars 1, was the first spacecraft to survive launch to be sent on its way to the Red Planet. Although Mars 1 […]
My latest article, “…Try, try again”, has been published on line in The Space Review. It is a continuation of a series of articles that I […]
Back in the 1990s, there was a veritable flood of new information about the once secretive Soviet space program including details of their early failed planetary […]
The announcement of the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting inside the habitable zone of the distant red dwarf star designated Kepler 186 has resulted in […]
There seems to have been increasing interest in the last decade or more in microsatellites (small satellites with masses in the 10 to 100 kg range), […]
