Ken Mattingly was a member of the prime crew for Apollo 13. But, he was removed from the crew just days before the flight.
It turns out, astronaut Charles Duke, who was on the backup crew, had caught measles and accidentally exposed the prime crew to the disease. Mattingly was the only member of the prime [...]

Although Robert McCall never got to space himself (something he passionately hoped to do), some of his artwork did make it there. Stamps he designed were canceled on the lunar surface by the Apollo 15 crew.
McCall died February 26. He was 90.
His artwork will always be a part of our popular space culture. In addition [...]

The first module of China’s space station is scheduled for launch next year.
The station will be called “Heavenly Palace”. The initial module (called Mandarin) will form a core into which future modules will be docked.
Mandarin is pretty big. It’s 30 feet long and weighs in at 8.5 tons. (okay, in space it’s weightless…) Still, it’s [...]

Okay. Not much to say except: a Japanese astronaut broadcast his preparation of sushi aboard the International Space Station. (Salmon! My favorite!)

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While the United States puts on the brakes, and hands over the responsibility for manned spaceflight to private companies, India is accelerating its pace.
A budgetary increase (by 35%) is advancing ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) plan to send two Indian astronauts into orbit for that country’s first manned space mission. India is also planning to [...]

Words cannot express how much I admire Buzz Aldrin. But…
He seems to think that America faced a choice of going to the moon or going to Mars, and wisely chose the latter. NASA’s new  course in space is allegedly to spend time and money doing research and finding the best way to send people to [...]

Esther Dyson, a wealthy technology entrepreneur, book a flight on a Soyuz sometime back. We wrote about it here. She trained for six months, but never flew. (Yet.)
She’s still hoping to fly—seats are getting scarce for paid space travelers aboard Soyuz—and it’s pricey even for successful businesspeople like Ms. Dyson.
That said, she had a very [...]

I find myself imagining this:
It’s September 2021. The world is watching as a Taikonaut—a Chinese astronaut—steps onto the lunar surface. It’s an incredible view, which I watch on my high-definition video glasses. I see it in real time, except for the 2 1/2 second delay to get the signal from the moon.
The Chinese lander is [...]

There’s a great profile of Elon Musk and his impressive company, SpaceX, in the New York Times. And, although SpaceX’s biggest accomplishment so far is, arguably, winning a huge contract to send supplies to the International Space Station…that wasn’t his main goal.
SpaceX is really about sending humans into space. The exact quote: “Really, the whole [...]

Most of the emerging private space companies are thrilled that the new NASA moon and beyond program—called Constellation—is probably going to be killed. I’m not sure why this is—there’s plenty of room for private companies to send astronauts into earth orbit. And private companies are a long way from sending people to the moon and [...]