JAXA’s little space camera that could

A quick update on the recently-launched IKAROS Japanese solar sail spacecraft: Earlier this week the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported visual confirmation that IKAROS’s solar sail has fully expanded as designed. As you can see, a complete success! Congratulations are in order all around to the IKAROS team as the craft enters into its […]

Orbital Tugs shove their way into reality

With the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle and the rise of corporate launch spacecraft, private companies are starting to think seriously about the next logical steps – orbital infrastructure. A few of them have even zeroed in on the next target in the business case by identifying a capability we don’t have: Orbital Tugs. […]

Plant living on the Moon?

If plans unfold as originally intended, one unexpected result of Google’s Lunar X Prize (which, like the original Ansari X Prize, is intended to spur private industry involvement in space development,) may be the transport and growth of the Moon’s first living plant. Odyssey Moon Ventures LLC and Paragon Space Development Corporation announced a partnership in […]

This Week: Space Falcons and Solar Sails

It’s with no small sense of excitement that I report two important developments this past week. First, of course, is the successful inaugural flight of the Falcon 9 rocket I’ve been following for some time now (here, here, and here). As the frontrunner corporate replacement for NASA’s retiring Space Shuttle, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has proven with this launch […]

Reincarnation Exists! -Bigelow Aerospace and Von Braun’s Project Horizon

History never fails to surprise and amaze me. While there is serious talk today regarding the logistics of setting up a lunar base and whispers of Bigelow Aerospace pushing their inflatable habitats as the right modules to compose one, I was awed and humbled when I recently learned that we’ve done this research before. Half […]

Space: The Northern Frontier

So, you want to build a rocketship? -Lines like these are sprinkled across advertisements during the 1960s for everything from whiskey to sprinkler manufacturers, painting themselves as part of a brighter future. So, with expectations 50 years ago set so high, in many respects the 21st Century to them would be something of a disappointment. […]

What does space sound like to you?

In space, no one can hear… well, anything. And this raises an interesting question to me: What does space sound like to you? -Because for a place physically incapable of transmitting sound, there are an awful lot of sounds that come to mind when we think toward the stars. Laser cannons? Phasers? Lightsabers? The roar […]

Alien archeology – now a real science?

Well, I’ve done it. Making good on a promise I made to myself while presenting a poster at the Society of American Archaeology conference in 2008, I recently submitted an article to the journal Space Policy outlining a framework for a science that doesn’t quite exist yet: Xenoarchaeology. “Xeno” is Greek/Latin for “foreign” or “stranger.” […]

Dawn of the Corporate Scientist-Astronaut

For those of you who have known me a while, who have had to endure my many rants during the last decade-and-a-half about the future and the promise of corporate space exploration, I have four words: I told you so. It’s with an almost electric sense of expectation that I am pleased to report a […]

Give it a rest, people: Voyager 2 spacecraft not hijacked by aliens

NASA is having a hard time talking to the Voyager 2 probe. It started in late April and has only gotten worse, with the latest transmission being quite garbled. Now, I can understand a bit of fun, tounge-in-cheek speculation, but this “Aliens have hijacked Voyager 2!” thing has gotten way out of hand. It’s as though someone […]