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Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

In June 1985 the Soviet Union released 2 balloons into the clouds of Venus. Each was 3.4 meters across, hung a 7-kilogram gondola from...

Harry J. KazianisSeptember 8, 2026

Space and Technology

Inside Mars’s Jezero Crater, once a lake and river delta, NASA’s Perseverance rover found complex carbon molecules built from the same four elements as all life on Earth — yet no one can yet say whether biology or ordinary chemistry made them.

NASA's Perseverance rover has found complex, ring-shaped carbon molecules sealed inside rocks in Mars's Jezero Crater, a basin that billions of years ago held...

Harrison KassJuly 27, 2026

Space and Technology

Saturn’s moon Titan has rain, rivers, seas, dunes, and seasons just like Earth, but at 290 degrees below zero the rain is liquid methane, the rivers carve ice, and the mountains are water frozen harder than granite — and in 2028 NASA sends a drone to see if it hides life.

Saturn's moon Titan looks uncannily like Earth: clouds, rain, rivers, lakes, seas, coastlines, dunes, and seasons. Then you learn the rain is liquid methane,...

Harrison KassJuly 27, 2026

Space and Technology

NASA’s Saturn V produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust, stood 363 feet tall, and sent 24 astronauts to the Moon without losing one — then in 1973 it was retired, its tooling scrapped, and nothing as powerful left Earth for almost 50 years.

From three miles away, the first thing to reach the press site was light. Then the sound arrived as force, shaking tripods and cracking...

Harry J. KazianisJuly 25, 2026

Space and Technology

In July 2028 NASA launches a car-sized, 1,000-pound nuclear drone toward Saturn’s moon Titan, a six-year, $3.35 billion trip to a world where the air is four times denser than Earth’s, gravity is one-seventh as strong, and flying is the easy part.

NASA is about to try something it has never attempted: instead of another six-wheeled rover, it will fly a car-sized, plutonium-powered drone across the...

Harrison KassJuly 24, 2026

Space and Technology

NASA’s first space station weighed 77 tons and its launch nearly destroyed it, but engineers saved the thing with an improvised parasol, and when it finally fell out of orbit in 1979 a small Australian town fined the agency $400 for littering.

America's first space station was built out of leftover Apollo hardware — a modified Saturn V third stage, 77 tons and 118 feet long,...

Harrison KassJuly 24, 2026

Space and Technology

The first spacecraft ever sent to another planet reached Venus in 1961. It had been dead and silent for three months by the time it arrived

Summary and Key Points: In February 1961, the Soviet Union launched Venera 1, the first spacecraft ever sent from Earth toward another planet. Built...

Harrison KassJuly 20, 2026

Artist's Concept of Voyager. NASA Photo.

Space and Technology

NASA’s Voyager 1 Radio Transmitter Is Weaker Than a Refrigerator Lightbulb. It Still Reaches Earth From 15 Billion Miles Away

When NASA launched Voyager in 1977, the spacecraft was built to work for about four years. Nearly five decades later it is still operating,...

Harrison KassJuly 20, 2026

Space and Technology

NASA Hired Hollywood Stunt Pilots to Catch a Falling Spacecraft With a Fishing Hook. Four Upside-Down Switches Ruined It

They rehearsed the helicopter catch eleven times without a miss. Then four switches, installed upside down to a drawing nobody questioned, sent three years...

Harry J. KazianisJuly 18, 2026

Comet Shoemaker-Levy_9 Approaching Creative Commons Image

Space and Technology

32 years ago this week, 20 fragments of a shattered comet slammed into Jupiter with the force of 300 million atomic bombs — humanity had never watched two Solar System bodies collide, and a NASA probe happened to have a ringside seat

In July 1994, astronomers watched something no human had ever seen: a comet colliding with a planet. Shoemaker-Levy 9 had already been torn apart...

Brent M. EastwoodJuly 17, 2026

Space and Technology

NASA’s first asteroid sample-return mission grabbed so much of Bennu that debris jammed the collector’s lid and the sample began leaking into space — engineers rushed to stow it early, and the capsule still landed in Utah in 2023 carrying 121.6 grams of 4.5-billion-year-old rock

OSIRIS-REx flew hundreds of millions of miles to do something NASA had never done: bring a piece of an asteroid home. The target was...

Harrison KassJuly 16, 2026

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19FortyFive

Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

Space and Technology

Inside Mars’s Jezero Crater, once a lake and river delta, NASA’s Perseverance rover found complex carbon molecules built from the same four elements as all life on Earth — yet no one can yet say whether biology or ordinary chemistry made them.

Space and Technology

Saturn’s moon Titan has rain, rivers, seas, dunes, and seasons just like Earth, but at 290 degrees below zero the rain is liquid methane, the rivers carve ice, and the mountains are water frozen harder than granite — and in 2028 NASA sends a drone to see if it hides life.

Space and Technology

NASA’s Saturn V produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust, stood 363 feet tall, and sent 24 astronauts to the Moon without losing one — then in 1973 it was retired, its tooling scrapped, and nothing as powerful left Earth for almost 50 years.

Space and Technology

In July 2028 NASA launches a car-sized, 1,000-pound nuclear drone toward Saturn’s moon Titan, a six-year, $3.35 billion trip to a world where the air is four times denser than Earth’s, gravity is one-seventh as strong, and flying is the easy part.

Space and Technology

NASA’s first space station weighed 77 tons and its launch nearly destroyed it, but engineers saved the thing with an improvised parasol, and when it finally fell out of orbit in 1979 a small Australian town fined the agency $400 for littering.

Space and Technology

The first spacecraft ever sent to another planet reached Venus in 1961. It had been dead and silent for three months by the time it arrived

Space and Technology

NASA’s Voyager 1 Radio Transmitter Is Weaker Than a Refrigerator Lightbulb. It Still Reaches Earth From 15 Billion Miles Away

Space and Technology

NASA Hired Hollywood Stunt Pilots to Catch a Falling Spacecraft With a Fishing Hook. Four Upside-Down Switches Ruined It

Space and Technology

32 years ago this week, 20 fragments of a shattered comet slammed into Jupiter with the force of 300 million atomic bombs — humanity had never watched two Solar System bodies collide, and a NASA probe happened to have a ringside seat

Space and Technology

NASA’s first asteroid sample-return mission grabbed so much of Bennu that debris jammed the collector’s lid and the sample began leaking into space — engineers rushed to stow it early, and the capsule still landed in Utah in 2023 carrying 121.6 grams of 4.5-billion-year-old rock

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