Category: Space Exploration

  • Where Are the Stars?

    John F. Lindner

    When viewing space photography, such as Apollo or International Space Station photos, people often ask, “Where are the stars?” Typically such photos properly expose the bright lunar or space station surfaces and consequently underexpose the dim background stars, rendering space as featureless black. Current ISS astronaut Matthew Dominick has been experimenting with photography, and his…

  • Aero thermo dynamics

    John F. Lindner

    Up early this morning to watch the spectacular fourth integrated flight test of SpaceX’s Superheavy Starship, the largest rocket ever built. Each IFT has greatly improved on the previous one, and the fourth was no exception. For the first time, both the booster and the ship softly splashed down in the ocean! Especially impressive was…

  • Venus’s Supercritical Ocean

    John F. Lindner

    The pressure and temperature near the surface of Venus are so high that its carbon dioxide atmosphere is a global ocean of a remarkable state of matter, a supercritical fluid, which fills any container like a gas but is as dense as a liquid. I created a carbon dioxide pressure versus temperature phase diagram using…

  • Percy & Ginny

    John F. Lindner

    A chill went through the spaceflight community last week as NASA reported that it had lost contact with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. Delivered to Mars underneath the Perseverance rover and intended as a 5-flight 30-sol tech demo, it had vastly exceeded expectations, including the first successful powered flight off Earth, a true Wright brothers moment,…

  • All Engine(s) Running

    John F. Lindner

    I asked Siri to wake me at 7:15 this morning so I could watch SpaceX’s second Integrated Flight Test of Super Heavy Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Unfortunately, my house suffered a rare power outage an hour or two earlier, so I found myself lying in bed watching the coverage on…

  • We Are Going

    John F. Lindner

    After half a century confined to low-Earth orbit, and as soon as late next year, humans will once again leave Earth and voyage to Moon. The reality of this exciting adventure crystallized earlier this month when NASA announced the diverse and inspiring Artemis II crew: Clockwise from left in the photo below are Christina Koch,…

  • Triple EVA

    John F. Lindner

    Since the mid 1960s, all space walks or extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) have involved just one or two astronauts — except once. In May 1992, on the STS-49 mission, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour was attempting to rescue a stranded communications satellite, Intelsat 603. After repeated two-person EVAs failed to capture the satellite, NASA and the…

  • Artemis Is the Sister of Apollo

    John F. Lindner

    I stayed up late last night and early this morning to watch the successful uncrewed launch of Artemis 1. In Greek tradition, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, and the Artemis program hopes to return humans — including the first woman — to Moon as preparation for sending them onward to Mars. As a child…

  • Zero-G Indicator

    John F. Lindner

    When Crew 5 rocketed to orbit last week aboard the SpaceX Dragon “Endurance” bound for the International Space Station, I was curious to see their zero-gravity indicator. A tradition SpaceX crews have adopted from Russian cosmonauts, the zero-g indicator is usually a stuffed animal whose first float announces the free-fall of Earth orbit. Was that a plush Einstein doll?…

  • For the dinosaurs!

    John F. Lindner

    The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do. I just watched live the first kinetic-impact asteroid-redirection test as NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft collided with the asteroid-moon Dimorphos of the asteroid Didymos. Below is the last image DART transmitted, truncated by the impact itself! The goal is to measurably change the speed…

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