Jan 22, 2010

Mars: Monkeys first?

Guess who's going to Mars!

America sent monkeys into space before men. But Apollo sent men, not monkeys, to the moon.

According to a report late last year, Russia plans to send a monkey on a 520 day round trip flight to Mars. The Russians believe that the radiation would make such a trip by a human currently inadvisable.

The monkey would be fed and cared for by a robot. This could be problematic.

During a 1987 space mission a monkey named Yerosha damaged its “caretaker” robot.

NASA layoffs: Will we regret this?

As the Apollo program wound down, many employees were laid off. We weren’t going back to the moon anytime soon, and budgets were tight. So, we got rid of those people…and their expertise. The result: in the 21st century, we’re largely having to learn how to get to the moon from scratch. We didn’t preserve [...]

To the post »

Peggy Whitson: chief astronaut

Fifty years ago, the astronaut corps was exclusively a boys club. Now, the astronaut office is headed by Peggy Whitson, an experienced shuttle astronaut with two ISS missions behind her. She may not be like “the icy commander”, Alan Shepard, who headed the astronaut office in the 1960s. But Whitson is tough—she was the first [...]

To the post »

Old photo of moon shows 1966 lander

Surveyor 1, an unmanned American spacecraft, landed on the moon in June 1966. It landed in the Ocean of Storms, which later became the landing site of Apollo 12. As you may recall, the Apollo 12 moonwalkers visited another Surveyor (# 3) during their trip in November 1969. In any case, in 1967 another craft, [...]

To the post »

Mars: Monkeys first?

Subscribe by Email!

Twitter: TheSpaceBuff

Other Great Sites!

Random Posts

NASA layoffs: Will we regret this?

Peggy Whitson: chief astronaut

Old photo of moon shows 1966 lander