Venting Methane: Evidence of Life (or Chemistry) on Mars

The planned successor to the shuttle program was dead. But it didn’t stay dead. Constellation, a program to return to the moon and go to Mars using a spacecraft called Orion and a booster called Ares, was criticized as too expensive and plagued with technical problems. So, the program was ended. But a few weeks [...]

America’s future in space is uncertain. The Obama Administration has a plan—albeit a vague one—and Congress is playing with that plan, making alterations and, of course, controlling the budget. The Shuttle program is ending, Constellation is doomed. We are probably entering an exciting era of private spaceflight, including private manned spaceflight. But we don’t know [...]

Gus Grissom was hungry. Unfortunately, the commander of the Gemini 3 spacecraft was not scheduled to eat. In fact, there was little food aboard for this brief test flight. And none of the food was for Gus. His crewmate, John Young, did have food. He was assigned that horrible early space food that you eat [...]