Category Archives: Space Travel

Voyager 2

Posted on April 5, 2015 by michellelei

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 →

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40 Year Odyssey of The Voyager 1

Posted on March 16, 2015 by farhannshabab

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 →

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A trip to Venus?

Posted on March 15, 2015 by karenagrebenc

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 →

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Space Movies – Fact or Fiction?

Posted on March 14, 2015 by bryancm1

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 →

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The Rosetta Mission

Posted on March 9, 2015 by michellelei

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 →

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Mars One Mission

Posted on February 14, 2015 by emilyksharp

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

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Intergalactic Travel and Popular Culture

Posted on January 24, 2015 by farhannshabab

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 →

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Faster than the Speed of Light

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Marissa LePore

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 →

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Traveling Faster Than The Speed of Light

Posted on January 18, 2015 by pgolemanska

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 →

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The Future of Space Exploration

Posted on April 29, 2014 by almetetj

One of the most interesting perspectives that Astronomy 201 has given me on space exploration is the role that funding plays. While in the past much of the money needed to fuel new discoveries came from government grants, budget cuts and restructurings have left astronomers with less and less funding from this outlet. The future […] Continue reading →

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