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Space Shuttle Discover at the Smithsonian 19FortyFive Original Photo from 2025 Space Shuttle Discover at the Smithsonian 19FortyFive Original Photo from 2025

Space and Technology

Returning from orbit, the Space Shuttle hit the atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound and wrapped itself in plasma hot enough to melt steel — and the only thing between that fire and the astronauts inside was a skin of silica tiles so good at shedding heat you could pull one glowing from a furnace and hold it in your bare hand.

Coming home from orbit, the Space Shuttle slammed into the upper atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound, compressing the air ahead of...

June 26, 2026
Apollo 11 Command Module 19FortyFive Original Photo from the Smithsonian Apollo 11 Command Module 19FortyFive Original Photo from the Smithsonian

Space and Technology

While Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon in July 1969, a Soviet robot was already circling overhead, racing to drill the lunar surface and rush its own samples back to Earth before Apollo 11 could splash down — until it crashed into a mountainside in Mare Crisium with the whole secret race nearly unknown to the public.

The story of Luna 15 is one of the great "what ifs" of the Space Race, and one most Americans have never heard. While...

June 26, 2026
Mars NASA Landers Mars NASA Landers

Space and Technology

NASA’s twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were each built to last 90 days, but one drove the surface for six years and the other for almost 15 — kept alive by Martian winds that randomly cleaned their solar panels — until a planet-wide dust storm finally silenced Opportunity, whose last message read: “My battery is low, and it’s getting dark.”

NASA's twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were each built to last 90 days. Kept alive by Martian winds that cleaned their solar panels,...

June 26, 2026
Lander Crashing on Mars Lander Crashing on Mars

Space and Technology

In October 2016 a European spacecraft had almost landed on Mars, surviving the heat, the parachute, and the radar, when its sensor was overwhelmed for barely a second — just long enough for the computer to decide it was already on the ground, shut off its engines, and drop the lander 2.3 miles onto the surface at 335 miles an hour.

In October 2016 Europe's Schiaparelli probe had nearly landed on Mars — surviving entry, parachute, and radar — when a sensor was overwhelmed for...

June 26, 2026
Mars USSR Rover Landing Mars USSR Rover Landing

Space and Technology

On November 27, 1971 the Soviet Mars 2 became the first human-made object ever to reach the surface of Mars — but it arrived by crashing, its landing wrecked by one of the largest dust storms the planet has ever produced, carrying a tiny tethered rover on skis that would have driven on Mars 25 years before NASA’s first, had it survived.

On November 27, 1971, the Soviet Mars 2 became the first human-made object ever to reach the surface of Mars. It got there the...

June 26, 2026

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