Monthly Archives: March 2012

Recovering Apollo 11′s Engines from the Atlantic

Posted on March 31, 2012 by asteitel

This week, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced a bold plan: to recover at least one of Apollo 11′s engines from the bottom of the Atlantic. The engines sunk to the briny deep after the Saturn V’s spent first … Continue reading →

Posted in Apollo, Manned Spaceflight, Rockets | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

NASA’s LRO: Shedding New Light on Old Mysteries

Posted on March 28, 2012 by asteitel

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter keeps finding interesting things on the moon. Last week, LRO’s camera photographed the landing sites of Luna 23 and 24, two Soviet probes that landed in the 1970s. The images have enabled scientists to solve mysteries about … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Space Science, Soviet, Unmanned Spaceflight | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Life and Times of Don McCusker

Posted on March 24, 2012 by asteitel

I got an email from a reader a few months ago who was particularly pleased that an old post mentioned his father, Don McCusker. McCusker was a North American Aviation test pilot and one of the few men to fly … Continue reading →

Posted in Aircraft, Gemini, Manned Spaceflight | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

The Unsinkable Gusmobile

Posted on March 23, 2012 by asteitel

On March 23, 1965, Gus Grissom and John Young launched on the first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3. First planned as a followup to Mercury known as Mercury Mark II, development of the Gemini spacecraft took nearly six years. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Gemini, Manned Spaceflight | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Vintage Space Fun Fact: Animals in Space Before NASA

Posted on March 14, 2012 by asteitel

For most people, early biological testing in space brings to mind Ham the chimp, angrily trying to bit any hand that came near him after his suborbital flight on a Redstone rocket. But Ham was launched on January 31, 1961, … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Space Science, Manned Spaceflight | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Surveyor 3, Apollo 12, and Interplanetary Microbes

Posted on March 9, 2012 by asteitel

This week, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter program released a striking image of the Ocean of Storms. The picture shows two historic missions at once: Surveyor 3 and Apollo 12, two missions that overlap in NASA’s history. The unmanned Surveyor 3 … Continue reading →

Posted in Apollo | Leave a comment

Should NASA Reconsider the ‘Faster, Better, Cheaper’ Approach to Exploring Mars?

Posted on March 6, 2012 by asteitel

On February 13, President Obama unveiled the proposed budget for NASA for the fiscal year 2013: $17.7 billion. That’s $59 million less than FY 2012, and a number that’s expected to remain constant over the next five years. Hardest hit … Continue reading →

Posted in Planetary Science, Unmanned Spaceflight | Tagged , | 20 Comments