Tag: space

  • Threats from Little Bodies Inside and Outside

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    Brendan Barry
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    Of course the inside threat are those little bodies of coronavirus causing Covid-19. We cover them a lot here. But there are also threats from little bodies outside, way outside. Like asteroids impacting us. And that was the news yesterday when NASA announced improved data from a mission to the asteroid Bennu allowed it to…

  • A Visual History of the International Space Station

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    Brendan Barry
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    When I was in high school, the United States would regularly spend space shuttles into orbit to help build this new thing: the International Space Station (ISS). In the aftermath of the Cold War, the nations of the world joined together to commit to building an orbital space station. There was of course a time…

  • But What About Pluto?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Damn you Neil deGrasse Tyson (but not really though)! Because, you know, he advocated for de-planet-fying Pluto back in the oughts. Which I mention because of this post from xkcd, which corrects common images of planets in the solar system accounting for their population. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • The Mars Rovers

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    Brendan Barry
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    Perseverance landed on Mars on 18 February, almost a month ago. The video and photography the rover has already sent back has been stunning. We all know she is the most capable rover yet landed on the Red Planet, but what we all want to know is how cute is Perseverance compared to her predecessors?…

  • All the Little Spacecraft

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    Brendan Barry
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    Early tomorrow morning, weather permitting, NASA’s Perseverance rover will blast off from Cape Canaveral on a six-plus month trip to Mars. There, hopefully it will land successfully and join all the rovers that have come before. And so this piece from the New York Times feels appropriate. It’s a great illustration of all the spacecraft…

  • Missing Planets

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    Brendan Barry
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    In science news, we turn to graphics about planets and things. Specifically we are talking about exoplanets, i.e. planets that exist outside our solar system. Keep in mind that we have only been able to detect exoplanets since the 1990s. Prior to then, how rare was our system with all our planets? It could have…

  • The M87 Black Hole in Context

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week we looked at the amazing news that astronomers had finally photographed a black hole. Or, technically, the shadow of a black hole since the black hole itself cannot be seen. I want to return to that news, because it’s awesome. And because xkcd published a piece that annotated the image to show the…

  • Black Holes and Revelations

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    Brendan Barry
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    On Sunday night I went to see the English rock band Muse perform here in Philadelphia. The concert was to support their latest album, but of course they played Starlight, a song which gave us its respective album’s title: Black Holes and Revelations. Then on Wednesday, scientists announced that for the very first time, we…

  • Opportunity Lost

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last summer NASA’s Martian exploration rover Opportunity went dark as its solar panels, needed to power the golf-cart sized explorer, were covered in dust from a planet-wide dust storm. Everyone hoped that over the following months the light Martian winds and dust devils would wipe clean the dust from the solar panels and the rover…

  • Walnut Pancakes in Space

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    Brendan Barry
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    One of the really neat things about space exploration has been the New Horizons probe that raced past Pluto, giving us the image of the now famous heart shape on the dwarf planet. But as it raced past a Kuiper Belt object named Ultima Thule on New Year’s, we received some tantalising first images of…