Christopher Ferguson, who commanded STS-126 last November visited his alma mater today—the Drexel College of Engineering in Philadelphia. Local Boy Makes Good The band played “Pick Up The Pieces” when Ferguson appeared at the top of the marble steps and he was introduced to the crowd. It was noted that several astronauts came from the [...]

I don’t want to sound too cavalier about this, but the fact is: rockets blow up. They are filled with explosive fuel which is then ignited. Trouble, sometimes, is inevitable.

This isn’t to downplay the serious implications of an exploding rocket. Some rocket failures are more serious than others: the Challenger failure, with the loss of seven lives, was crushing.

But sometimes rocket failures are not that serious; they are expensive and a part of learning to build new, better, and successful space vehicles. Thinking about rocket failures in recent years—and in recent weeks—illustrates the point

Asteroids are all the rage. We worry about being hit by one. We talk about sending people to one. We return sample material (or hope we did) from one. All this asteroid talk makes me think about a spacecraft’s unplanned landing on an asteroid way back in 2001. The spacecraft—NEAR Shoemaker—was designed to study the [...]