drew@drewexmachina.com
With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title “the largest launch vehicle in service”: the […]
On January 25, 2004, NASA’s MER B (Mars Exploration Rover B) named Opportunity successfully landed at 1.95° S, 354.47° W on Meridiani Planum. After moving out […]
During the opening decades of the Space Age, crewed spaceflight was restricted to programs sponsored by the world’s largest governments. In order to spur civilian commercial […]
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 […]
The launch of the first Falcon Heavy developed and built by aerospace upstart, SpaceX founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk, was accompanied with headlines that […]
According to the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) which maintains records for aeronautical activities, the “official” threshold of space is at an altitude of 100 kilometers which […]
For avid fans of spaceflight, watching the holiday festivities on the International Space Station (ISS) has become a bit of a tradition in recent years. Remarkably, […]
The impact of the first human to fly into space can hardly be appreciated today in this age of a continuous human presence in Earth orbit. […]
Life sometimes presents us with some interesting coincidences and I stumbled upon one in the weeks leading up to the first test flight of NASA’s Orion […]
I find it hard to believe, but ten years ago today I was finishing preparations for my last of what seemed to have been countless business […]
The first part of my latest article, “Planetary Orbit Insertion Failures Part I”, has been published on line in The Space Review. With a half a […]
It is quite common to associate rockets with cutting edge technology. But oddly enough until the last decade or so, the rocket engines used by most […]
