The Assassin Who Proposed Rocket-powered Flight

We lost our first “teacher-in-space,” Christa McAuliffe, when the Challenger blew up in 1986. McAuliffe’s backup, Barbara Morgan, became a full-fledged astronaut and had a successful flight aboard STS-118 in 2007. The next 2 teachers in space Now, we’re going to have our first flight with 2 (former) teachers. Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II [...]

Now that the United States has abandoned manned space flight, and will scrap its Constellation program, the new race for the moon has two players: China and India. China—with a bigger budget and a few manned flights under its belt—has to be considered the favorite. That said, India has good engineers and seems determined to [...]

SpaceX,the private space company that produces a line of launchers (called Falcon) and a cargo/manned spacecraft (Dragon) will deliver supplies to the International Space Station for the first time—in February. This is a BIG test. With ambitious plans, SpaceX’s most important mission to date will be this one, justifying NASA’s contract to them to re-supply [...]