Mars
Space Exploration Is Still The Brightest Hope-Bringer We Have
I am one of the few African-American aerospace engineers who helped design the Apollo spaceships that took men to the Moon. My great-grandfather was a slave in Claiborne, Alabama, who used primitive tools to work the land. My father was born in Alabama before the Wright brothers made mankind’s first flight. He lived to see …
Our Mostly Dry Planetary Neighbors Once Had Lots Of Water—What Does That Imply For Us?
We already knew about Venus. We had our suspicions about Mars. Now we’re sure. Our two closest solar system neighbors once had oceans – planet-encircling, globe-girdling, Earth-like oceans. But waterbearing planets are fragile. Venus didn’t have the right stuff and lost her oceans to space. We have the smoking gun. And now we know that …
The Dream Of Living On Other Worlds
The idea of living on the Moon, Mars or an even more distant planet has long captured our imagination. When facts are in short supply, fiction thrives – but science fiction has a habit of eventually becoming science fact. In 1608, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler wrote his novel Somnium, in which he describes a …