Category Archives: Space Travel

What would life be like on Pluto for humans?

photo from space.com Above is an artist’s conception of what Pluto would look like if one could stand on one of the dwarf planet’s moons and stare back at Pluto.  But this article goes on to tell us what our experiences would be if we were to actually step foot on the surface of Pluto […] Continue reading

Posted in Dwarf Planets, Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on What would life be like on Pluto for humans?

Voyager 2

Almost all of the information and pictures scientists have today from the outer planets is due to flyby missions such as NASA’s Voyager 2. As we learned in the last unit, flyby space probes are especially helpful because they can pass by and gather information on multiple planets within one single mission, and that is… Continue reading Voyager 2 Continue reading

Posted in Space Travel | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Voyager 2

40 Year Odyssey of The Voyager 1

The Voyager 1, launched on 5th September in 1977, is the farthest spacecraft and hence the farthest man made object from Earth. At a distance of 12 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft is escaping the Solar system at a speed of 1 million miles a day. At that distance, it takes mission control’s communications, travelling […] Continue reading

Posted in Historical, Space Travel | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 40 Year Odyssey of The Voyager 1

A trip to Venus?

video from phys.org It seems like all of the talk in the field of space travel these days has been too focused on a trip to one single location…Mars.  But noticing while studying these past few chapters that Venus is actually a bit closer to Earth than Mars, that brought up a question in my […] Continue reading

Posted in Space Travel | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A trip to Venus?

Space Movies – Fact or Fiction?

Our in class discussion about some space movies had me venturing down a rabbit hole about Hollywood’s misconceptions about space. The most entertaining aspect for me is how movies portray character deaths in space. Movies always find creative and dramatic ways for their characters to die in space – none of which are accurate. In […] Continue reading

Posted in Space Travel | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Space Movies – Fact or Fiction?

The Rosetta Mission

Over spring break, I came downstairs for dinner and my dad just so happened to be watching a PBS documentary on the ESA (European Space Agency)’s recent Rosetta mission. The documentary explains the behind the scenes work that went into developing the mission, giving insight into the building of the orbiter, the unique technological features,… Continue reading The Rosetta Mission Continue reading

Posted in Instruments, Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The Rosetta Mission

Mars One Mission

In our society, the career of an astronaut has been painted as an idealistic childhood dream job or the mythical …

Continue reading

Continue reading

Posted in Space Travel, Terrestrials | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mars One Mission

Intergalactic Travel and Popular Culture

The universe is unimaginably vast; it is so enormous that the speed of the fastest wave-particle in existence -light – puts a cap on how much of the universe we can even observe. At 14 billion ly from our point of observation lies the edge of the observable universe. So if and when humanity becomes a space faring […] Continue reading

Posted in Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Intergalactic Travel and Popular Culture

Faster than the Speed of Light

In summer of 2013, the New York Times published an article about NASA’s (then) newest project. Physicists and engineers were trying to determine whether “warp drive” might one day be possible. Warp drive, for those of you who are not Trekkies, is traveling faster than the speed of light or 3.0 x 10^5 km/s, and thus far […] Continue reading

Posted in Instruments, Light, Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Faster than the Speed of Light

Traveling Faster Than The Speed of Light

Can you possibly travel at a speed faster than the speed of light? Scientists think it might be possible even without violating Einstein’s theory that the speed of light is the “galactic speed limit.” Some theoretical models show that in the early stages of the universe, right after the Big Bang, space expanded at a […] Continue reading

Posted in Class, Light, Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Traveling Faster Than The Speed of Light