The Franklin Institute is one of the nation’s premier science museums. I’ve always been charmed by its old wing—with charming and educational exhibits retained from many years ago. A unique lunar module And, I’m a huge fan of what I call “the urban LM”, a full-size lunar module built by Grumman and donated to the [...]

NASA is working on a new robotic explorer—Axel, a tethered rover designed to go into Martian craters and send back data previously unattainable. Sure, we’ve sent amazing rovers to Mars — the tiny Sojourner, and the bigger Spirit and Opportunity. But these wonderful vehicles have limitations. In particular: we don’t send them down into craters [...]

Years before Pink Floyd recorded anything, the Soviet spacecraft, Luna 3, took the first picture of the darkside of the moon. Groundbreaking Missions. No Photos. Earlier probes did interesting work. Luna 1 performed a number of scientific experiments on its lunar flyby mission in January 1959. For example, it revealed that the moon had no [...]